Stevie Nicks says not having an abortion would have meant the end of Fleetwood Mac

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Stevie Nicks has revealed she believes Fleetwood Mac would have split up if she hadn't had an abortion 40 years ago.

Lead singer 76 rose to fame in the pop-rock band in 1975 and had a whirlwind romance with bandmate Lindsey Buckingham. After the relationship ended, Nicks began dating Eagles singer Don Henley in the late 1970s.

Nicks revealed that she became pregnant with Henley's child, whom she deemed too immature to be a father, and claimed that he leaked the news of her abortion to the public.

In conversation with Rolling StoneNicks said: “Don Henley opened it up to the public. He called me to apologize. I said, “You know what, Don?” We dated for about a year and remained good friends. “Leather and Lace connects us forever,” she said, referring to her 1981 single.

“So he let that out of the bag anyway. I probably never would have done it. Why should I say anything about it? Everything was completely legal. It was around 1977 or early 1978.”

She continued: “Don was the first man I actually dated after Lindsey and I broke up. When this pregnancy happened, I was like, 'What the hell happened?' I totally respect the rules of the world here and suddenly this is happening to me and I can't understand it.”

Nicks was on a contraceptive coil at the time of pregnancy. She recalled: “I go to my gynecologist and he says, 'Well, you're protected by your Copper-7 IUD, but your uterus is tilted.' This IUD only protects half of you, and we didn't know that.'”

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The singer explained that abortion was the right choice for her at the time as Fleetwood Mac was enjoying the success of their 1977 album Rumorswhich Buckingham previously said the band put aside their “personal differences” to create.

Nicks continued: “What the hell am I supposed to do now? I can't have a child. I'm not the kind of woman who would hand her baby over to a nanny, not in a million years.

“So we would be lugging a baby around the world on tour and I wouldn't do that to my baby. “I wouldn't say I only need nine months. I would say it would take me a few years and that would break up the band, period.”

She explained: “So my decision was to have an abortion. If people want to be mad at me for that, I don't really care because my life was my life and my plan was my plan and has been since I was in fourth grade.”

Asked if she was implying that Fleetwood Mac would have broken up if she had remained pregnant, Nicks replied: “Done. And that would have been sad because I wouldn't have married Don Henley.

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“It was a really fun relationship, but he was in a bigger band than me,” she added, referring to the Eagles. “These guys were rock stars of the highest order. Nobody in this band was ready to get married and have children.”

Nicks admitted she didn't want the pressure of being a single mother. “I knew it would just be me,” she said. “And I wouldn’t have even known what to do with that responsibility.”

The “Fleetwood Mac” star has previously spoken out about her abortion and emphasized that she has no regrets about the abortion.

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In 2020 she told The Guardian: “I simply wouldn't have been able to have a child back then if we had worked as hard as we did all the time.

“And there was a lot of drugs, I did a lot of drugs… I would have had to leave. And I knew that the music we would bring to the world would heal the hearts of so many people and make people so happy.

“And I thought, you know what? This is really important. There is no other band in the world that has two main female singers and two main female writers. That was the mission of my world.”

If you are affected by the issues raised in this story, you can find support on the NHS this page. Or you can speak to a confidential person at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, the UK's largest abortion provider, by calling 03457 30 40 30 or emailing [email protected]