Joy Behar is opening up about a health scare she says she experienced 43 years ago that’s still fueling her passion for reproductive rights.
On Wednesday’s episode of “The View,” Behar and co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sunny Hostin discussed the Supreme Court’s June ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated the federal right to an abortion.
This week, advocates for abortion rights were handed a surprise victory when voters in Kansas, a Republican stronghold, overwhelmingly rejected a ballot initiative that would have stripped abortion protections from their state constitution.
During the conversation, Behar told her co-hosts that she “almost died” from an ectopic pregnancy in 1979, about nine years after she’d given birth to a daughter, Eve.
“They rushed me to the hospital,” Behar said. “The doctor, the next day, said ‘We almost lost you.’ Because I was in the situation where I could go to Beth Israel Hospital, and they took care of it there.”
Watch a clip from Wednesday’s episode of “The View” below.
According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, an ectopic pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg grows outside of the uterus, often in a fallopian tube. The embryo can’t survive, and the growing tissue may cause life-threatening internal bleeding if left untreated.
Behar on Wednesday clarified to guest co-host Hasselback that she did not have an abortion or a miscarriage.
“There is nowhere to go from that,” she said. “You can’t give birth from your fallopian tube. And the fetus will not grow. It just grows, but not to full term.”
Behar joins a growing list of celebrities, including “The Hills” star Lauren Conrad and Grammy-winning musician Amanda Shires, who have shared their experiences with ectopic pregnancies in connection with the Supreme Court’s June ruling.
Elsewhere in the chat, Behar addressed lawmakers who oppose abortion rights, like Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee in Georgia’s Senate race.
“What are these people thinking about, when they talk about the health of the mother?” she said. “People like that cannot be in positions of power.”