Halsey revealed this week that early in their career, she suffered a miscarriage amid an appearance. In an interview with Mary Alice Haney and Dr. Thais Aliabadi for the SHE MD Podcast, Halsey, who is now 29 years old, said that they started miscarrying a pregnancy at the age of 20 before a performance.
The singer, who uses the pronouns they and she, said to the program presenters, “I was in a really tough position because it was really early on in my career, and there was a lot attached to the show. There was a corporate partner, there was a greater media entity partner, but more importantly than that to me, there were a thousand kids who waited all day long to get into this show and see me.”
After around 45 minutes, she “ended up just putting on an adult diaper” and carried on with the event. They “went to a hotel” and “threw up in the parking lot” after exiting the venue. As the singer of “Without Me” put it, “I was sick all night.” “I remember sitting in the bathtub because I just didn’t know what to do with all the blood. Forgive me for being so graphic” She got up early the following morning to catch a flight to Canada.
“I remember thinking to myself, ‘I’m 20 years old. I should be able to carry a baby,’” she said. “I didn’t want to be pregnant. I was way involved in my career. So, I had a lot of complex feelings of relief, but also confusion, but also guilt, and also grief. And then at the same time, I had a big burning question in my mind, which is, ‘Something must be wrong with me, because of all the times in my life where I should be able to conceive and carry to term, this is the age. What’s happening?’”
Halsey said that they miscarried multiple times before reaching 24 in an essay published in 2022 for Vogue. The artist revealed their experience in response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, stating they had to have an abortion amid a miscarriage. The singer had given birth to a son the year before. “My abortion saved my life and gave way for my son to have his,” they stated.
The artist has also been vocal about their experiences with lupus, endometriosis, T-cell disease, and infertility throughout the years. “I want more babies really badly,” they discussed on the podcast. “I had such a pleasant experience being pregnant with my son, and he’s the light of my life….I think about [how] I’m living as a sick person for a majority of his life. It was two-thirds, three-quarters of it, and I had a lot of guilt. And I just remember laying there and just feeling so bad about myself, and then I realised that that unnecessary guilt was making me worse. And the thing I told myself is… I was grieving the fact that I couldn’t be the best mom in the world because I wanted to be the best mom in the world and history.”