Stevie Nicks Reveals That Her Pregnancy with Don Henley in the 1970s Would Have Broken Up Fleetwood Mac

Stevie Nicks recently revealed a personal story from the late 1970s that she says would have broken up Fleetwood Mac at the time. Speaking with CBS Sunday Mornings, she shared that she’d had an abortion after getting pregnant while linked to Don Henley. If she had carried the fetus to term and given birth, she admitted it would have “destroyed” the band.

“I got pregnant and it was like, ‘Why? I have an IUD, I am totally protected, I have a great gynecologist. How come this has happened? What the heck?’” Nicks said in the interview. “And I’m like, ‘This can’t be happening.’ Fleetwood Mac is three years in. And it’s big. And we’re going into our third album. It was like, ‘Oh no, no, no, no, no, no.’”

Nicks had broken up with Lindsey Buckingham a few years prior to being linked with Henley. She admitted that expecting his child would not have gone over well with her fellow band members.

“It would’ve been a nightmare scenario for me to live through,” she revealed. Nicks had an abortion because she said she wouldn’t have taken just nine months off from the band; she would have gone all in had she had the baby, taking off years, as she stated to Rolling Stone recently. That would have thrown a wrench into Fleetwood Mac’s trajectory, and Stevie Nicks knew that.

Stevie Nicks Speaks Out About Her Abortion in the 70s, Doesn’t Regret Decision: “My Life Was My Life”

Stevie Nicks admitted that abortion is a tough subject to navigate, but figured she has a platform, the understanding, and the experience to speak about it. Her new song, “The Lighthouse,” was even drawn from the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Nicks stated that it takes “some courage” to enter into these conversations, but she has that platform to speak from. “I was also there. I was ‘been there, done that,’” she said.

This wasn’t the first time Stevie Nicks has addressed her abortion in public. In 2014, she spoke about it after Don Henley revealed that the Fleetwood Mac song “Sara” was about their unborn child.

“Had I married Don and had that baby, and had she been a girl, I would have named her Sara,” Nicks explained to Billboard at the time. “But there was another woman in my life named Sara, who shortly after that became Mick’s wife, Sara Fleetwood.”

Speaking with Rolling Stone, she shared that, had she become a parent, she would have been hands-on. “I wouldn’t say I just need nine months. I would say I need a couple of years, and that would break up the band, period,” she said.