Pop icon Britney Spears is opening up about a personal experience she held close to her heart for two decades, in her upcoming memoir titled The Woman in Me.
In the book, she wrote about becoming pregnant with former flame Justin Timberlake but later opted for abortion.
"It was a surprise for me, but 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,” she wrote.
"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.
"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.”
She went on to explain that the abortion was one of the most agonising things she has ever experienced.
Spears and Timberlake were Hollywood’s "it” couple, dating from 1999 to 2002.
The "Baby One More Time” singer later married dancer Kevin Federline in 2004 and share two sons, Sean Preston, 18 and Jayden James, 17. The couple then divorced in 2007.
Meanwhile, Timberlake married actress Jessica Biel in 2012 and they are parents to two sons, Silas and Phineas.
The upcoming memoir is set to be published on Oct 24.