MANHATTAN, NEW YORK: ‘The View's Whoopi Goldberg has revealed that the “hardest thing” about going through menopause is being stripped of the “choice” to have more children.
On May 9, 1974, Whoopi was 18 years old when she welcomed her daughter, Alexandrea Martin, with her first husband Alvin Martin. Alexandrea went on to become an actress and producer. Through her only daughter, Goldberg has three grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.
On Thursday's episode of the daytime talk show, the 67-year-old actor, comedian, and author spoke openly about her experience with menopause. She discussed symptoms such as hot flashes, low libido, and vaginal dryness with her co-hosts.
What did Whoopi Goldberg say about menopause?
Whoopi said it was no longer having the “choice” to conceive that “irritated the hell” out of her the most.
During her on-air discussion with Womaness co-founders Sally Mueller and Michelle Jacobs, she said, “You know the hardest thing for me, I will say, was when I realized that choice had been taken out of my hands.”
“Because I always could control when I got pregnant, it was in my control. And I can say the only thing that really irritated the hell out of me was the fact that I woke up and I thought, ‘Oh I don't have a choice now. I'm not in charge of this anymore.’”
The 1991 Oscar winner added, “But then the positive thing was, white pants! This made me happy!”
Joy Behar, 81, one of the show’s longtime running co-hosts added, “I watched Whoopi go through menopause on the show. She would come out here and all of a sudden sweat would start pouring off of her head. That doesn't happen, she's over it now!”
“A month. It lasted a good month,” Whoopi said, before confirming that she's now “done” with menopause.
When the topic of low libido levels came up, Joy admitted, “That's one of the draggy things about it, they need to fix that.”
Sunny claimed, “They have medicine for it now.”
However, Whoopi was quick to fire back, “They don't. They're lying to you! There's nothing right now. There's nothing!”
Joy added, “If men went into menopause there would be a cure for it!”
Offering some advice, Whoopi said, “The strongest thing is, don't be afraid of it.”
“People are afraid... there are things that are happening to you. Yes, you are getting older but that doesn't mean anything stops, it doesn't mean your life stops, it just means that you're getting older.”
Whoopi Goldberg's take on abortion
Whoopi who has been married and divorced three times has spoken previously about having abortions, admitting to having six or seven before she was 25.
Writing about one harrowing experience when she was just 14 in an essay for the book ‘The Choices We Made’ by Angela Bonavoglia, Whoopi wrote, “I found out I was pregnant when I was fourteen. I didn't get a period. I talked to nobody. I panicked.”
“I sat in hot baths. I drank these strange concoctions girls told me about - something like Johnny Walker Red with a little bit of Clorox, alcohol, baking soda (which probably saved my stomach), and some sort of cream. You mixed it all up.”
“I got violently ill. At that moment I was more afraid of having to explain to anybody what was wrong than of going to the park with a hanger, which is what I did.”
More recently, Whoopi has also said that God supports abortion because he “made us smart enough to know when it wasn't going to work for us” during a discussion on ‘The View’.
Months earlier she had given an impassioned speech about the “human issue” of abortion a day after a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion suggested a majority of justices could be poised to overturn Roe v Wade.
“The reason abortion came about: Women in this country lived forever with it being illegal. Women, when they decide something is not right for them, they’re going to take it into their own hands,” she said.
“Well, we got tired of tripping over women in bathrooms, public bathrooms, who were giving themselves abortions because there was nowhere safe, nowhere clean, nowhere to go.”
“This law came about because people wanted people to have somewhere safe and somewhere clean.”
Whoopi added, “Getting an abortion is not easy, making that decision is not easy. It’s not something people do lightly! It’s not something you can just do!”
“It is a hard, awful decision that people make. And if you don’t have the wherewithal to understand that, to start this conversation with, ‘I know how hard this must be for you’, if you’re starting it by telling me I’m going to burn in hell, then you’re not looking out for me as a human being, whether I subscribe to your religion or not. And that is not OK!”
