Local entrepreneur Liz Hilliard opens up about having an abortion in 1971, before Roe v Wade

Hilliard, the woman behind a Charlotte fitness empire, shared a secret she planned to take to her grave: she had an abortion pre-Roe v. Wade. 

What’s happening: Hilliard and Kennelly recorded the latest episode of their podcast, “Be Powerful with Liz & Lee,” before leaving for a trip abroad. It’s called “What It Was Like to Get an Abortion Before Roe v. Wade,” and it dropped as the sun rose over Charlotte on June 30.

• “I didn’t tell my daughter until a couple of weeks ago,” she told me. “My ex-husband doesn’t know, my very best friends in the whole world, including my family except for my mother, who is now deceased, no one knew that, and I was so shamed by it.”

Context: She recorded the podcast in response to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, because she doesn’t “get the choice to be quiet” anymore, she told me.

Why it matters: The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last week has compelled many people to share personal stories they never thought they’d tell. And in the case of Hilliard and others from her generation, it’s brought flashbacks of a pre-Roe era.

• “I’m not ashamed anymore,” she told me. “I’m more ashamed that we are stepping backwards almost 50 years. I’m more ashamed that we are at the point in our world where we are allowing people besides ourselves to have control of our bodies when I thought that was a done deal.”

Flashback: Hilliard, who is now 68, was 17 years old when she had an abortion in 1971. She shares on the podcast how her dad died in 1970 and her boyfriend’s dad died three months later. They were hurting, but they were also in love and had been together for three and a half years. Then she found out she was pregnant.

• Her mother would be her biggest advocate and ally, taking her to multiple doctors.

• One doctor told Hilliard with disdain, “you just need to get married.”

Hilliard would later drive two friends to abortion clinics after Roe v. Wade.

• “It was the worst day of their life,” Hilliard told me.
• “It’s always the worst day of your life,” she added.

Between the lines: Hilliard is no stranger to speaking out.

• “I am a strong person,” she told me. She built Hilliard Studio Method with her daughter Clary Hilliard Gray. 
• “I am very vocal,” she added. “I’ve left my husband, and now I’m in a relationship with a woman. I have really gone inside myself and decided what’s important in life.”

The bottom line: “Now we have the opportunity to stand up tell our stories and tell why it’s important that a 17-year-old girl in my shoes could not be the 68-year-old in my shoes today,” Hilliard told me. “My life would have been drastically different.”