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Why Stephen Curry's mom Sonya told NBA son she considered aborting him: 'It’s not a fairytale out here'

Sonya Curry shares that she told her son Stephen Curry she contemplated abortion while pregnant when him. (Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images)
Sonya Curry shares that she told her son Stephen Curry that she contemplated abortion while pregnant while him. (Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images)

NBA mother Sonya Curry reveals she terminated a pregnancy in her new book, Fierce Love.

In a podcast interview with Jemele Hill on Jemele Hill is Unbothered, Sonya Curry, 55, discussed her new memoir and the teachable moments from her life she has shared with her kids. In the book, she revealed that she had an abortion prior to having her three children and also contemplated another.

"[I was] dating, you know, the older guy when I was in high school leading into college and making the decision about terminating a pregnancy," she said, referencing these moments as the most emotional parts of the book for her. "Telling those stories and just reliving those feelings that I kind of suppressed and pushed down for a long time ... you wonder did it mess them up at some point?"

Sonya shares three children with ex-husband, former NBA player Dell Curry: Stephen Curry, who plays for the Golden State Warriors, Seth Curry who plays for the Brooklyn Nets and daughter Sydel Curry.

The book features vulnerable moments from her life, before and after becoming an NBA wife and mother, many of which she had carefully protected from the public eye since she was in her twenties.

"My biggest fear is protecting the purpose of the book and not letting the world take it and create their own narrative…now I'm putting myself in that position for people to have a say and an opinion when I've worked for thirty-some years for them not to," she explained.

While her children were not privy to all of the details of her life pre-marriage, Sonya recalled divulging her experience dating an older man in high school to her youngest daughter, Sydel, to help her understand why she was so protective.

"They didn't know the details of it. They knew that I had a boyfriend. It was just something I didn't really think to share with them, except for now that I'm thinking about it, when Sydel was going through her situation and it was just like, 'I got to tell her, I got to tell her why I'm being this way,'" she said. "She's different than I am, she's a different person, but I want to be protective."

In the book, she also shares that she contemplated an abortion again when she got pregnant with her oldest son, Stephen Curry. In the interview, she revealed that she actually shared this information with him in hopes of showing how layered and real their lives were, even with all of the afforded luxuries that come with being the children of a professional athlete.

"Yes. I had shared it with him. One of the things that, you know, raising our kids Dell and I had decided that there [were] some things we could tell them, we didn't hide a lot about our relationship as much because we always wanted to use situations as teaching opportunities for them so that they could understand it at the developmental stage that they were at, but just to also not hide things," she said of the importance of transparency when raising children in the limelight. "I just think sometimes as parents we think we got to hide things and kids wanted to know that we're real and it's not a fairytale out here.

"When you have all that we have and you're in the arenas that we're in, it's kind of hard for them not to think they're in utopia … so we tried to deliberately share some things with them," she said.

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