Britney Spears opens up about having abortion while she was dating Justin Timberlake

Britney Spears has revealed having an abortion when she became pregnant by her ex-boyfriend and fellow music superstar Justin Timberlake.

Spears made the revelation in her upcoming memoir, The Woman in Me, which chronicles the pop icon's journey through "fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope," according to its website.

According to the 41-year-old singer's account, she became pregnant with Timberlake's baby while they were dating in their late teens from 1999 to 2002. It, however, resulted to abortion which was recently confirmed by PEOPLE Magazine. 

Spears recounted the experience in her book, saying, "It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy. I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipate."

“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 added.

Spears recalled that she was not too keen on it but still ended up ending her pregnancy because Timberlake was not ready to be a father.

"If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father," she writes in the book.

“To this day, it’s one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life," the pop star stressed.

Spears and Timberlake met as young cast members in the TV program The Mickey Mouse Club back in 1992. They started dating in 1999, the same year Spears started her "Baby One More Time" tour and a year before Timberlake and "NSYNC launched their No Strings Attached album, which became one of the fastest-selling albums in history with 2.4 million copies sold in the US on its first week.

While still together, Spears and Timberlake performed as a couple in several events, including the 2001 Superbowl Halftime show and a February 2002 episode of Saturday Night Live. They also graced events hand-in-hand, like how they did at the 2001 American Music Awards, the Challenge for the Children charity event in the same year, and the premiere of Crossroads, a film headlined by Spears back in February 2002.

A month later, on March 27, 2002, Spears confirmed her split with the musician amid rumors of their breakup. "I’m single… right now," she said in an interview with Richard Bacon on Britain's Big Breakfast show. 

While the estranged couple was mum about the real cause of their breakup, Spears was rumored to have cheated on Timberlake, with the NSYNC star refusing to deny the claims in an interview with Barbara Walters in November 2002.

Fueling the rumors further was Timberlake's music video for Cry Me a River that was released on the same month. It featured a woman being unfaithful in his relationship with the singer and having similar looks as Spears.

Apart from the cheating allegations, Spears was shamed in the media for claiming that she was a virgin and saving herself for marriage while she was in a relationship with Timberlake. 

Timberlake, however, confessed that he had sex with Spears in a radio interview following their break-up in 2002. Almost two decades later, in 2021, Timberlake publicly apologized to the Toxic hitmaker, saying that he had 'failed" her.