Jackie ‘O’ Henderson has revealed she had a devastating abortion when she was in her 20s during her relationship with her ex-husband Lee Henderson.
The radio host, 49, opened up for the first time about the heartwrenching decision in her newly-released memoir, The Whole Truth.
She shared that she fell ‘unexpectedly’ pregnant during her early romance with UK photographer Lee in around 2001, when she would have been about 26 years old.
In the emotional extract, Jackie explained that she and Lee came to the very difficult decision to have an abortion because neither of them were ready to be parents.
‘I was unexpectedly pregnant. It was morning sickness. But I wasn’t remotely ready for motherhood,’ Jackie shared.
Jackie said although she and Lee were soon to be married, tying the knot in 2003, they were still ‘young and growing’ and didn’t feel equipped to be parents at that time.
‘It was an incredibly tough decision, but – through tears- we made the one we felt was right. Because we weren’t ready. We just weren’t,’ she said.
Jackie recalled the difficult and conflicting emotions she grappled with at the family planning clinic in Woollahra as she detailed the operation.
Jackie ‘O’ Henderson has revealed she had a devastating abortion when she was in her 20s during her relationship with her ex-husband Lee Henderson
She said she sat in the waiting room for ten minutes before going in for the surgical abortion, which uses suction to remove the pregnancy tissue and takes less than 10 minutes.
‘It’s all so quick, so sober, so perfunctory. You wake up, and that’s emotional. I know there were tears on my face, definitely, and if I think about it deeply all these years later, even for a moment, there are tears now, too,’ she bravely wrote.
Jackie admitted she still feels very emotional about the abortion to this day, more so now she is a mother to her daughter Kitty, 13, who she welcomed with Lee in 2010.
She said she often finds herself wondering what might have been as she watches Kitty grow up, admitting that while she doesn’t regret her decision, it wasn’t ‘easy’.
‘You try not to beat yourself up too much, but you do the maths every year. I don’t know why, but I always thought it was a boy. A son. My son would be turning twenty-three this year,’ she added.
Jackie heartbreakingly said she worried she would be ‘punished’ and wouldn’t be able to have children as she spoke about how she came to terms with the abortion.
She went on to open up about the difficult time she had when she struggled to fall pregnant years later and said she was ‘thankful’ Lee suggested they try IVF.
In her new book The Whole Truth, she shared that she fell ‘unexpectedly’ pregnant during her early romance with UK photographer Lee in around 2001 (they are both pictured in 2004)
The broadcaster later went on to welcome her daughter Kitty with Lee in 2010 after undergoing several rounds of IVF to fall pregnant.
Jackie and Lee went their separate ways in 2018 after 18 years together, with Jackie also opening up about their turbulent split in her new memoir.
She detailed how they started bickering all the time, with Jackie feeling like she was slowly losing her identity before they finally made the difficult decision to separate.
In The Whole Truth, Jackie also revealed her past drug and alcohol addiction for the first time after struggling in secret for many years.
She told how she spiralled into a deep addiction following the 2018 breakdown of her marriage to Lee and again during the Covid-19 lockdown.
At the height of her addiction, Jackie took around 10-12 Stilnox/Zolpidem sleeping pills and 24 Panadeine Forte a day and washed them down with alcohol – which medics warn is highly dangerous.
Detailing the depths of her addiction in an emotional segment on her self-titled radio show last week, Jackie revealed her struggles first began more than 15 years ago.
At the time, she was prescribed a strong opioid painkiller for endometriosis – a disease in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus, causing severe pain.
Jackie admitted she still feels very emotional about the abortion to this day, more so now she is a mother to her daughter Kitty, 13, (both pictured) who she welcomed with Lee in 2010
‘I got prescribed that and I found myself at the time taking it more than I needed and I recognised that this might be a bit of a problem, so I stopped at the time,’ she said.
However, Jackie then went back to the medication after her 2018 split from Lee in a bid to escape from the pain she was feeling.
‘I went back to it as a way to kind of go to some happy please, and it was a way of escaping and it was so the wrong thing to do,’ she confessed.
Jackie said she started taking a few codeine ‘here and there’ and one Stilnox at night with a glass of wine, which she described as a ‘blackout’ situation.
‘You can still be awake and have no idea what’s going on,’ Jackie shared.
‘It’s like you’re kind of functioning but you have no memory.’
However, what really ‘kickstarted’ Jackie’s harrowing addiction was isolating at home during the Covid-19 pandemic, when she said she was ‘struggling’ and felt ‘so sad’.
‘The dosage started to creep up more and more and it got extreme and I was averaging about 24 Panadeine Forte a day and then I was averaging about 10 to 12 Stilnox,’ she shared.
‘Someone was watching over me because I don’t know how I woke up most days with that kind of dosage.’
Eventually, Jackie confided in her best friend Gemma O’Neill about her struggles, which led to them flying out of Australia in secret to go to The Betty Ford Clinic in California.
Jackie said Betty Ford told her not to change ‘anything’ about her usage before arriving as it could be ‘dangerous’ so she was still taking pills the day she flew out to the US.
In her new book, Jackie also revealed her past drug and alcohol addiction for the first time after struggling in secret for many years
Known for treating Hollywood stars including Keith Urban, Robert Downey Jr. and Lindsay Lohan, Betty Ford charges anywhere from $45,000 to $90,000 AUD for a month-long stay, depending on the program.
When she checked in for a $50,000 28-day stay in November 2022, Jackie didn’t tell any of her colleagues – not even her co-host Kyle Sandilands – and instead claimed she was suffering with long Covid.
Reading out an extract from her memoir’s prologue, she shared: ‘The whole team wishes me well, I’m sure they’re curious about my temporary leave of absence, but none of them really knows why I’m stepping back.
‘But it has to be this way.’
Apologising to her listeners, she tearfully admitted she ‘lied’ by ‘omission’ when she publicly shared on her radio show that she was battling long Covid at the time.
‘I want to apologise to our listeners and everyone in my life where I haven’t sort of been forthcoming with this, I just needed to concentrate on that part first, that recovery for the first year particularly,’ she added.
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