Stevie Nicks Says Fleetwood Mac Would Have Been 'Done' Without 1977 Abortion | Stevie Nicks

Stevie Nicks has thrown herself into the ongoing fight over abortion access in the U.S. because she's “been there and done that,” the legendary singer-songwriter says in a new interview.

“I tell a good story,” Nicks noted in an interview with CBS News Sunday Morning Clip of which was distributed in advance on the network. “So maybe I should try to do something.”

“I was there too.”

Nicks' comments come after the release of her new single “The Lighthouse” in September, which was inspired by progressives' fight to restore federal abortion rights in the US.

She wrote the rock song after three U.S. Supreme Court justices appointed by Donald Trump's White House voted to essentially overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling, which gave Americans a constitutional right to abortion.

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Nicks spoke about her certainty that if she hadn't had an abortion in the 1970s, it would have spelled the end of the famed band Fleetwood Mac, which she ultimately helped create rock immortality.

Nicks had an intrauterine device for contraception at the time, but still became pregnant with singer Don Henley after ending her previous relationship with her Fleetwood Mac bandmate Lindsey Buckingham, she told Rolling Stone. She said she decided to terminate the pregnancy around 1977 or early 1978, when Fleetwood Mac was on top of the world after its album Rumors.

Rumor has it that Fleetwood Mac won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1978, a year in which the band played 18 live shows in 11 states. Three of the album's singles – “Go Your Own Way”, “Don't Stop” and “You Make Loving Fun” – reached the top 10 on the charts. “Dreams,” featuring Nicks' vocals, debuted at No. 1, while “Rumors” ultimately ranked seventh on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

“What the hell am I supposed to do now?” Nicks told Rolling Stone about her thought process at the time of her aborted pregnancy. “I can’t have a child. I'm not the kind of woman who would hand her baby over to a nanny, not in a million years.

“So we would be lugging a baby around the world on tour and I wouldn't do that to my baby. “I wouldn't say I only need nine months. I would say I need a few years and that would end the band period.”

Nicks, 76, said she “doesn't really care” if people get upset with her for choosing to have an abortion. “My life was my life, and my plan was my plan and has been since I was in the fourth grade,” Nicks told Rolling Stone, adding that Fleetwood Mac would have been “done” had she decided otherwise .

Nicks' comments to Rolling Stone about her personal experience with abortion echo those she shared with the Guardian in 2020, when she said: “There's just no way I could have had a child back then if I had worked so hard “How we worked all the time.”

Meanwhile, Nicks said she heard all around her that “someone has to do something…” [and] Say something” to support abortion rights.

“And I'm like, 'Well, I have a platform,'” Nicks said after CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Tracy Smith asked the singer about the courage it took to “wade into the waters of the abortion debate.”

The result was The Lighthouse, a rare new release for Nicks, whose last album of entirely fresh material was released in 2011. The single portrays her as a beacon helping women fight for their rights as voters choose between Kamala Harris and Trump, whose supporters include a conservative think tank urging him to end the attacks on sexual and reproductive health and strengthen rights.

“They'll take your soul, take your strength, unless you stand up and take it back,” Nicks sings on the track. “Try to look into the future and get angry/It's slipping through your fingers, you don't have what you had anymore/And you don't have much time to get it back.”