Gage Skidmore / Flickr
CV NEWS FEED // Sylvester Stallone, the star and writer of Rocky, shocked his daughters during an interview on their podcast when he mentioned that his mother tried to abort him.
His daughters, Sophia and Sistine, interviewed him on their podcast, Unwaxed, about the documentary, “Sly,” which tells Stallone’s life story. He started talking about his childhood in a home where “everybody was extremely unhappy with who they were.”
He said his mother and father “were not parents” and not interested in raising children. Sistine said that she noticed in the documentary that he mentioned that his mother was nervous to have him, and she asked if he ever felt unwanted as a child.
He said that he felt hesitant sharing the story, but that his mother would regularly tell him “The only reason you’re here is because the hanger didn’t work.” She also told him, “If there was really something wrong with your brain,” she would have left him near an open window to freeze to death, “because I’d be doing you a favor.”
His daughters stared at him speechlessly for a few moments, and he continued, “I almost thought she was joking.” His daughter Sophia responded, “Of course, I mean, what type of mother says that to her child?”
The girls asked him why he didn’t share about the maternal abuse in his documentary, and he answered, “I thought it would be too much for the audience.”
Stallone is not the first star to open up about narrowly escaping abortion. Jack Nicholson, famous for his lead in The Shining, was conceived when his mother was only 17, and his grandparents raised him, acting as if his mother was his older sister. A pro-life ministry, Birth Mother Ministries, shares that Nicholson said he is “positively against” abortion, adding, “I don’t have the right to any other view. My only emotion is gratitude, literally, for my life.”
Portuguese superstar soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo also was nearly aborted by his mother, who told Eurosport, “God didn’t want that to happen and I was blessed because of that and God didn’t punish me.”
Opera singer Andrea Bocelli told his audiences a similar story, Catholic News Agency reports, where a mother was pressured to abort because her unborn child had a disability, but she decided not to.
“That woman was my mother, and I was the child. Maybe I’m partisan, but I can say that it was the right choice,” Bocelli said.
He noted he hoped his testimony would help other mothers in similar situations.
More recently, as CatholicVote reported, the YouTuber and Twitch streamer Ninja (Richard Tyler Blevins) shared that he was “not supposed to be born” as doctors pressured his mother to have an abortion, saying that he had a disability. His mother kept him, and he said, “My mom is a saint and an angel and I love her to death,” adding, “Imagine what would’ve happened if she listened, you know, to one of those doctors or one of those people. You guys wouldn’t be here. No one would be in this room watching.”
