Lisa Marie Presley Reveals Heartbreak Over Abortion: “Stupidest Thing I’ve Ever Done”
In her posthumously published memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of music legend Elvis Presley, opens up about deeply personal experiences, including her struggles with pregnancy and the heartbreaking decision to have an abortion.
Lisa Marie’s relationship with musician Danny Keough, with whom she shared two children, Riley and Benjamin, was central to her emotional story. In the book, Lisa recalls her first unexpected pregnancy with Danny, which she only discovered after being rushed to the ER with severe pain.
“The first time I got pregnant, I didn’t even know it,” Lisa Marie wrote. During the early months of their relationship, she was reportedly rushed into surgery, where doctors initially believed she had appendicitis. However, it turned out to be an ectopic pregnancy, a potentially life-threatening condition.
“…While they were in there, they took out my appendix, too,” the singer added.
That pregnancy was a shock to Lisa Marie, who admits she’d been careless with birth control in previous relationships but had never conceived before Danny.” As she admitted, “I had never gotten pregnant with any other person, which is fascinating because I’d been equally sloppy, not using birth control or whatever. But with Danny it happened that first time, and then it happened again when we got back together.”
The second pregnancy left Lisa Marie in turmoil. Unsure of what to do, she made the difficult decision to have an abortion, a choice that would haunt her for years. “…It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my whole life. I was devastated. I did it and we both cried,” she confessed.
The emotional aftermath of the abortion caused irreparable damage to their relationship. “We were both destroyed and not long after that we fell apart and broke up. I couldn’t live with myself,” Lisa Marie reflected, still grappling with guilt and sorrow. Her grief was so overwhelming that she began to obsess over the idea of becoming pregnant again.
Desperate to “redeem” herself, she meticulously planned when she was ovulating and went to great lengths to be with Danny. “I didn’t care if he wanted to be a part of it or not. I felt that I had to redeem, to make amends, because I still couldn’t believe I had had an abortion. I thought, I’m going to have this child. There is a child I need to be having,” she recalled.
In the memoir, Lisa Marie admits she felt a deep connection to the child she lost, constantly asking for forgiveness. “I would be talking to the lost child, saying, ‘I’m so sorry, I can’t believe I f—— did that. Please forgive me and stay with me until I get pregnant again,'” she wrote.
Two weeks after leaving Aruba, the singer discovered she was pregnant again. This time, she and Danny decided to marry. She candidly admitted that she “trapped him,” though she didn’t fully intend to do so.
In 1989, their daughter Riley Keough was born, followed by their son Benjamin Storm in 1992. Despite their turbulent relationship, Lisa Marie cherished the children they shared.
Sadly, the To Whom It May Concern hitmaker passed away in January 2023 at the age of 54 from a small bowel obstruction, a complication of her previous bariatric surgery. In her memoir, she shares her pain, regrets, and the deep love she had for her children.
