Paris Hilton had an abortion in her 20s but kept it secret out of "shame".

The socialite-turned-DJ, 42, had her first child with her 42-year-old venture capitalist husband Carter Reum earlier this month — a boy she has named Phoenix Barron Hilton Reum — but has now revealed she was almost a mother more than two decades ago.

She told the February issue of Glamour magazine about her termination in a candid interview in which she also recalled the sexual abuse she suffered as a teen: "This was also something that I didn't want to talk about because there was so much shame around that.

"I was a kid and I was not ready for that."

Paris added it was not until the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe v Wade abortion ruling last year she felt motivated to talk about it.

She said: "I think it is important. There's just so much politics around it and all that, but it's a woman's body... why should there be a law based on that?

"It's your body, your choice and I really believe in that. It's mind-boggling to me that they're making laws about what you do with your reproductive health, because if it were the other way around with the guys, it would not be this way at all."

Paris added she decided to have her son via surrogacy because she feared pregnancy would bring back the trauma of her abortion — and memories of being abused at her old school for troubled teens, Provo Canyon in Utah, where she says she was sexually molested and regularly had samples of her blood withdrawn and drips pumped into her veins.

Paris added about the prospect of giving birth: "I'm just so scared, I think — again, leading back to Provo or even being in a doctor's office, just all of that.

"The shots, the IVs that they put in... when I was in The Simple Life, I had to be in a room when a woman was giving birth and that traumatised me as well.

"But I want a family so bad, it's just the physical part of doing it. I'm just so scared... childbirth and death are the two things that scare me more than anything in the world."

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Source: Bang