Maya Henry is opening up about a difficult time.
Two years after her breakup from ex-fiancé Liam Payne, the former model shared that she once felt pressured into having an abortion by a former partner.
"If it were up to me, I wouldn't have done it," Henry told People in an interview published May 15. "But then also, if I were to have made a different decision, then I would've lost the person that I loved."
Recalling that she and her unnamed ex had "difficult conversations" about the ultimatum, the 23-year-old added, "But looking back now, things happen for a reason."
Henry's candid confession comes ahead of the release of her new novel, Looking Forward, which she insisted is fiction but "inspired by true events" that happened in her personal life.
In the book, which tells the fictional story of a model's tumultuous relationship with a British pop star, the main character Mallory finds out she's pregnant but decides not to keep the baby after her boyfriend, Oliver, says he'll walk away from the relationship if she does. Eventually, her abortion results in medical complications that cause her to bring herself to the hospital to treat hemorrhaging.
"What I went through in real life is very similar to what Mallory went through in the book," Henry explained. "I definitely did have some complications, and I did have to go to the hospital alone."
As for why she chose to have her character experience a similar pain in the book? Henry said she wanted to show how disconnected a man's perspective on abortion can be from how women actually feel during the process.
"It was very lonely, having these men tell you, ‘Oh, it's going to feel like a heavy period, it's not going to be that painful, it's going to be easy,'" she explained. "But I'm like, you've never even gone through anything like [this], so how would you know to tell me? That's why I wanted to include it in the book, because I've seen so many people online talk about taking the abortion pill and it was the most painful thing for them. It's just mind-boggling to me that you could tell a woman how they're going to feel."
Henry—who said she "drew inspiration" for Looking Forward from journals she kept during the 2020 pandemic—first went public with her relationship with Payne in 2019. The novelist and former One Direction member announced their engagement the following year before calling it quits in May 2022.
E! News reached out to Payne's rep for comment but has not heard back.