Britney Spears says she had an abortion while dating Justin Timberlake

Britney Spears has revealed she had an abortion while dating Justin Timberlake in her upcoming memoir.

The US pop star wrote “if it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it,” after becoming pregnant while dating Timberlake more than 20 years ago.

In an excerpt from “The Woman in Me”, that was published in People magazine, Spears continued: “and yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father.”

The pregnancy “was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy,” she wrote, saying that she had wanted to start a family with Timberlake – it was just earlier than expected.

“But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young,” she wrote.

Timberlake is yet to comment.

The couple are said to have started dating in 1999, when Spears was 17 and Timberlake was 18, and broke up in 2002. It’s unclear when the pregnancy happened.

Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears in 2002. / Credit: AP

In the excerpt published in People, she characterised the abortion as “one of the most agonising things I have ever experienced in my life.”

Spears’ memoir will be published on October 24, just months after her divorce from Sam Asghari was announced, and promises to shed light on her tumultuous decades in the spotlight.

She had two sons with Kevin Federline, but was placed under a court-ordered conservatorship – mostly under the supervision of her father – that controlled her life, money and voice after public breakdowns.

That conservatorship would last nearly 14 years, ending in late 2021, after a swelling #FreeBritney movement that helped secure new limits on conservatorships in California.

Many of Spears’ allegations against her father and others who operated the conservatorship are expected to be heard in a civil trial scheduled for next year.

A 2021 documentary, “Framing Britney Spears,” included an old interview in which Timberlake spoke of sleeping with a former girlfriend and indicated he ridiculed her in his “Cry Me A River” music video.

That sparked a backlash in which fans accused him of contributing to Spears’ breakdown and also renewed ire about his role in Janet Jackson’s so-called wardrobe malfunction during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.

Subsequently, he apologised to Spears and Jackson “because I care for and respect these women and I know I failed.”

A few months later, as Spears revealed long-guarded secrets about what she described as an “abusive” conservatorship in court, Timberlake tweeted his support.

“After what we saw today, we should all be supporting Britney at this time,” he posted in June 2021.

“Regardless of our past, good and bad, and no matter how long ago it was… what’s happening to her is just not right.”