Jackie ‘O’ Henderson has revealed she had a devastating abortion when she was 20 during her relationship with ex-husband Lee Henderson.
The radio host, 49, first spoke about the heartbreaking decision in her newly released memoir, The Whole Truth.
She shared that she became pregnant “unexpectedly” during her initial romance with British photographer Lee around 2001, when she would have been about 26 years old.
In the emotional excerpt, Jackie explained that she and Lee made the very difficult decision to have an abortion because neither of them were ready to be parents.
“I got pregnant unexpectedly. It was morning sickness. But I wasn’t even remotely prepared for motherhood,” Jackie shared.
Jackie said that although she and Lee would soon marry and were married in 2003, they were still “young and growing” and did not feel ready to be parents at the time.
‘It was an incredibly difficult decision, but, through tears, we made what we believed was right. Because we were not prepared. “We just weren’t,” he said.
Jackie recalled the difficult and conflicting emotions she had to deal 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 20 during her relationship with ex-husband Lee Henderson.
She said she sat in the waiting room for ten minutes before undergoing the surgical abortion, which uses suction to remove pregnancy tissue and lasts less than 10 minutes.
‘It’s all so fast, so sober, so superficial. You wake up and that’s emotional. I know there were definitely tears on my face, and if I think deeply about it all these years later, even for a moment, there are tears now too,’ she wrote bravely.
Jackie admitted that she still feels very emotional about the abortion to this day, even more so now that she is a mother to her 13-year-old daughter Kitty, whom she welcomed with Lee in 2010.
He said he often wonders what could have been as he watches Kitty grow up, and admits that while he doesn’t regret his decision, it wasn’t “easy.”
‘You try not to beat yourself up too much, but you do the math every year. I don’t know why, but I always thought he was a boy. A son. “My son would be twenty-three years old this year,” he added.
Jackie heartbreakingly said she was worried about being “punished” and not being able to have children as she talked about how she accepted abortion.
She went on to talk about the difficult time she had when she struggled to get pregnant years later and said she was “grateful” that Lee suggested they try IVF.
In her new book The Whole Truth, she shared that she became pregnant “unexpectedly” during her initial romance with British photographer Lee around 2001 (both are pictured in 2004).
The broadcaster later welcomed her daughter Kitty with Lee in 2010 after undergoing several rounds of IVF to get pregnant.
Jackie and Lee went their separate ways in 2018 after 18 years together, and Jackie also opened up about their turbulent split in her new memoir.
She detailed how they started arguing all the time, and Jackie felt like she was slowly losing her identity before they finally made the difficult decision to break up.
In The Whole Truth, Jackie also revealed for the first time her past addiction to drugs and alcohol after struggling in secret for many years.
She told how she fell into deep addiction following the breakdown of her marriage to Lee in 2018 and again during the Covid-19 lockdown.
At the height of her addiction, Jackie was taking between 10 and 12 Stilnox/Zolpidem and 24 Panadeine Forte sleeping pills a day and taking them with alcohol, which doctors say is very dangerous.
Detailing the depths of her addiction in an emotional segment of her eponymous radio show last week, Jackie revealed that her struggles began more than 15 years ago.
At that time, she was prescribed a strong opioid pain reliever for endometriosis, a disease in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus, causing severe pain.
Jackie admitted that she still feels very emotional about the abortion to this day, even more so now that she is a mother to her 13-year-old daughter Kitty (both pictured), whom she welcomed with Lee in 2010.
“I was prescribed that and at that point I found myself taking more than I needed and I recognized that this could be a problem, so I stopped at that point,” he said.
However, Jackie went back on the medication after her split from Lee in 2018 in a bid to escape the pain she was feeling.
“I came back to it as a way to seek happy pleasure, and it was a way to escape and it was very wrong,” he confessed.
Jackie said she started taking a little codeine “here and there” and a 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 functioning but you have no memory.”
However, what really “fueled” Jackie’s distressing addiction was isolation at home during the Covid-19 pandemic, when she said she was “struggling” and felt “very sad”.
“The dosage started increasing more and more and became extreme and I was averaging 24 Panadeine Forte a day and then averaging 10 to 12 Stilnox,” he shared.
“Someone was looking out for me because I don’t know how I woke up most days with that kind of dose.”
Eventually, Jackie told her best friend Gemma O’Neill about her struggles, which led to them secretly flying out of Australia to go to the Betty Ford Clinic in California.
Jackie said Betty Ford told her not to change “anything” about her use before she arrived as it could be “dangerous”, so she was still taking pills on the day she flew to the US.
In her new book, Jackie also revealed for the first time her past addiction to drugs and alcohol after struggling in secret for many years.
Known for treating Hollywood stars, including Keith Urbano, Robert Downey Jr.. and Lindsay LohanBetty Ford charges between $45,000 and $90,000 AUD for a one-month stay, depending on the program.
When she signed up for a 28-day stay worth $50,000 in November 2022, Jackie didn’t tell any of her colleagues. – not even his co-host Kyle Sandilands – and instead claimed he was suffering from long Covid.
Reading an excerpt from the prologue to her memoir, she shared, “The entire team wishes me well, I’m sure they’re curious about my temporary leave of absence, but none of them really know why I’m taking a step back.”
“But it has to be that way.”
Apologizing to his listeners, he tearfully admitted that he “lied” by “omission” when he publicly shared on his radio show that he was battling long Covid at the time.
“I want to apologize to our listeners and to everyone in my life that I haven’t been forthcoming about this, I just needed to focus on that part first, on that recovery during the first year in particular,” he added.