Britney Spears has revealed she had an abortion while she was dating Justin Timberlake.
The revelation has come from her upcoming memoir The Woman in Me, with Spears saying Timberlake "definitely wasn't happy" about the news the pair had become pregnant.
"It was a surprise, but for me, it wasn't a tragedy. I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I'd anticipated," Spears wrote.
"But Justin definitely wasn't happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren't ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young."
The couple began dating in 1999 and split in 2002.
Spears also firmly implied Timberlake had been responsible for her getting the procedure amid her own fears and religious beliefs.
"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.
"To this day, it's one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life," she wrote in the memoir.
Timberlake has yet to respond to the claims, but it was widely reported he had been nervous about the release of the memoir given their acrimonious split.
Publicity for Spears' book said it would showcase "for the first time her incredible journey [and] strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history."
Its release comes nearly two years after the 'Toxic' singer was released from her court-ordered conservatorship which had been imposed on her for 13 years.
