Britney Spears says she had an abortion because Justin Timberlake wasn’t ready for fatherhood

In her new memoir, “The Woman In Me,” Britney Spears is sharing her truth with the world. Much of it is painful for the pop legend, including the period of time when she dated fellow pop star Justin Timberlake. For the first time, she’s revealing that she had an abortion while dating him, because Justin said he “didn’t want to be a father.”

She says she was just 19 when she became pregnant with Timberlake’s baby, and while she knew she was young, she still wanted a family with him.

“It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn’t a tragedy. I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated,” Spears writes of the pregnancy in the book, per PEOPLE. “But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young.”

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She and Timberlake dated from 1999-2002, first getting together when she was 17 and he was 18.

“To this day, it’s one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life,” she writes in the book. “If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father.”

After they broke up, Britney Spears welcomed her two sons — Sean Preston, 18, and Jayden James, 17 — with her ex-husband, Kevin Federline. 

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A rep for Timberlake has yet to respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

The Guttmacher Institute says that in 2020 there were 14.4 abortions in the U.S. per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44. Its data shows that the rate of abortions among women has generally been declining in the U.S. since 1981, when it reported there were 29.3 abortions per 1,000 women in that age range. Additionally, 59% of women who get abortions are already mothers.

It takes a notable amount of bravery to share your truth, even 23 years later. But it speaks to Britney Spears’ dedication to her fans and newfound lease on life—she’s no longer letting anyone else speak for her.

“It is finally time for me to raise my voice and speak out, and my fans deserve to hear it directly from me. No more conspiracy, no more lies — just me owning my past, present and future,” she tells PEOPLE.

Her memoir comes almost two years after she was released from her court-ordered conservatorship, held by her father Jamie and his legal team for 13 years. The conservatorship was terminated altogether in November 2021 after Spears gave a harrowing testimony in court in June 2021.