Alyssa Farah Griffin is choosing to give Justin Timberlake “a little grace” in the wake of Britney Spears’ explosive memoir, “The Woman In Me.”
In the book, the “Toxic” songstress, 41, revealed she had an abortion while she was dating the *NSYNC alum, 42, because he “wasn’t ready” to be a dad.
Griffin, 34, described the revelation as a “gut punch,” but emphasized that she “feels strongly that both parents [should] have a say in what happens with the child.”
“I’m going to try to give them both a little grace,” she told The View’s executive producer Brian Teta on Monday’s episode of “The View: Behind The Table” podcast.
“We wanted to talk about this, but it is dicey on a number of levels,” Griffin went on, referencing the decision not to discuss Spears’ abortion on the daytime talk show.
“Think of the pressure that these two young icons at that time were under. They had to live this myth and pretend — while playing very ‘sexified’ people in their public lives — [that] they were virgins, which as an adult now I’m like ‘of course they weren’t.'”
The former White House aide went on, “I think it exposes like a human side of a story that, in retrospect, that totally makes sense that they went through all of those struggles. The challenge that it presents is a tough topic to talk about in the context of reproductive health.”
She noted that it was “heartbreaking” to read that Spears may have made a different decision if not for what Timberlake wanted.
“But I do hope for her, talking about it was helpful and now you see how important having kids was to her. She’s got her kids, she had talked about wanting to have more … I could dissect how Britney was treated for hours,” she said.
“The pressures of being hyper-sexualized with then having to pretend you’re a virgin. They both, in different ways, went through hell and I’m gonna try to give them both a little grace in it,” Griffin concluded.
While Spears’ memoir officially hit shelves Oct. 24, the “Cry Me A River” hitmaker has not addressed any of the claims made about him in the book.
However, sources told Pvnew that the former boy bander was “concerned” about what Spears was going to divulge from their three-year relationship when they were teenagers.
“He’s very curious,” one insider told us earlier this month. “It’s eating at him.”
In her book, the “Stronger” singer wrote that she agreed not to see a doctor or go to the hospital in order to keep the pregnancy from going public.
“It was important that no one find out about the pregnancy or the abortion, which meant doing everything at home,” she wrote.
Spears, who was about 19 at the time, went into detail about the “excruciating” physical pain she endured.
Follow Pvnew’s coverage of ‘The Woman in Me’
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“I kept crying and sobbing until it was all over,” the Grammy winner recalled.
“It took hours, and I don’t remember how it ended, but I do, twenty years later, remember the pain of it, and the fear.”
Elsewhere in the memoir, the “Crossroads” star claimed Timberlake “definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy” and suggested they were “too young” to become parents.
“I’m sure people will hate me for this, but I agreed not to have the baby. I don’t know if that was the right decision,” she admitted.
“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.”
