Most pop stars announce things with a teaser. Halsey announced the hardest chapter of her life in an essay that read like a medical chart with a heartbeat. On July 1, 2022, a week after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, she wrote in Vogue that she had had three miscarriages, and that the procedure after one of them saved her life. Four years on, her son Ender is five, and the story has gained a few chapters she could not have written then.
What the Vogue essay actually said
The headline everyone shared was “My abortion saved my life.” The detail is more precise, and more frightening. Halsey wrote that one of her miscarriages required “aftercare,” “a gentle way of saying that I would need an abortion, because my body could not terminate the pregnancy completely on its own and I would risk going into sepsis without medical intervention.”
She did not dress it up. “During this procedure, I cried. I was afraid for myself and I was helpless.” Then the line that carried the essay: “My abortion saved my life and gave way for my son to have his.”
Critics argued that care after a miscarriage is not what abortion bans target. Halsey’s point, as I read it, was about who gets to decide in that room, and how fast. When the words for a medical procedure become a legal question, a patient on the table should not have to wait for the lawyers to agree on a dictionary.
Three losses before one birth
Halsey has talked about pregnancy loss for years. She has said she miscarried in 2015, and she has linked that loss to endometriosis, which she was diagnosed with and has had surgery for. The earlier version of this article guessed at the timing of the other losses from her dating history. We have removed that. She has not dated them publicly, and a breakup is not a medical record.
What she has said is how much those losses shaped her son’s arrival. She told readers she rewrote her will in the third trimester, with instructions down to organ donation, because she was “prepared for the worst.” Ender Ridley Aydin was born in July 2021. Her album If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power followed on August 27, 2021, which means she was making a record and a person at the same time. Most of us struggle to do one thing per trimester, and that thing is usually assembling a crib.
Asked whether motherhood had changed her view on abortion, she answered in the essay: “The answer is firmly no. In fact, I have never felt more strongly about it.” I respect the clarity. She did not soften it to sell a tour.
The health story got bigger, not smaller
In 2022 Halsey said her health had changed a great deal since pregnancy and birth, and listed new diagnoses on Instagram: Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Sjögren’s syndrome, mast cell activation syndrome and POTS. That was not the whole picture. In June 2024 she revealed that she had also been diagnosed in 2022 with systemic lupus erythematosus and a rare T-cell lymphoproliferative disorder, “both of which are currently being managed or in remission.”
She told that story through music, with the song “The End,” which opened her October 2024 album The Great Impersonator. “After a rocky start, I slowly got everything under control with the help of amazing doctors,” she wrote. I find that sentence braver than any big reveal: no drama, just the paperwork of staying alive.
Co-parenting, an engagement and a horror film
Halsey and Ender’s father, screenwriter Alev Aydin, split in April 2023. She filed to establish custody, asking for joint legal custody and primary physical custody so Ender could travel with her on tour. In May 2026, TMZ reported that she asked the court to drop the case, and the judge dismissed it. No custody order has been made public. Quiet resolutions are the best kind for a five-year-old.
She announced her engagement to actor and director Avan Jogia in September 2024. As of 2026 they are still engaged and, by Jogia’s account, in no rush to set a date. He told People that having a partner to come home to and talk about “the frustrations of creativity” is “such a joy.” They are also working together. In September 2026, Deadline reported that Halsey was starting to film Replacer, a horror film she wrote with Jogia, who directs. It is her first lead film role.
On the music side, her Back to Badlands tour, marking ten years of her debut album, ran from October 2025 to February 2026.
My take
In 2022 this read as one essay about one ruling. In 2026 it reads as the start of a longer story about a woman who keeps turning private medical facts into public sentences, then going back to work. The essay ended with a promise to hold her son in one arm and fight with the other. Four years on, he is five, the diagnoses have names, and the other arm is clearly still busy.
Sources
- Halsey on Instagram, September 2026
- Vogue: Halsey, “My Abortion Saved My Life” (July 1, 2022)
- Halsey on Instagram (@iamhalsey)
- HalseyVEVO: “The End” (Official Lyric Video)
- TODAY: Halsey rewrote their will while pregnant
- ET: Halsey shares new diagnoses (2022)
- TheWrap: Halsey details life with lupus and a rare lymphoma disorder (2024)
- ET: Halsey splits from Alev Aydin (2023)
- TMZ: Halsey drops custody case (May 22, 2026)
- iHeart: Avan Jogia on his relationship with Halsey (2026)
- Deadline: Halsey to begin filming Avan Jogia’s “Replacer” (September 2026)
