The reaction was tense and painful. Jack was stunned. Joan recalled his first words: “I have no words.” As he gathered himself, he eventually told her: “I’m so very sorry, Joan.”
A week later, his tone changed. He sent her $400 and asked her not to go through with the pregnancy. When the envelope arrived empty, and she informed him, Jack erupted in anger. He eventually sent more money, and Joan ended the pregnancy.
For Joan, the experience was a turning point. The romance was over. As she told him in their final phone call: “You love Caroline, and I know that. But I’m somebody’s daughter, too. Remember that the next time you treat a woman the way you’ve treated me.”
In 1960, JFK became president. Joan had moved on, marrying Freemont Hitchcock in 1963. Still, when Kennedy was assassinated, the grief struck her like a thunderclap. She wrote: “I closed my bedroom curtains and shades, and I cried, screamed, and cursed alone for hours.”
Jackie, too, carried her own wounds. She never learned of the abortion, but acknowledged the emotional devastation her marriage had caused. “I loved Jack. I know he loved me,” she once said. “But my marriage was like a deep black hole, and I knew if I looked down, I’d fall in.”
JFK’s own perspective remained layered in ambiguity. In 1962, when asked by Senator George Smathers if he feared Jackie would discover his infidelities, Kennedy replied: “There are no other women. I’ve never told any other woman I love her. There is only Jackie.”
Jack and Jackie planned to renew their vows in 1964, a quiet recommitment after more than a decade of marriage. But fate intervened in Dallas. Joan’s part in his story never came to light during his lifetime — but now, decades later, her voice and truth are part of the legacy.
In telling this story, Taraborrelli doesn’t try to excuse JFK — but to explain him. Through Joan Lundberg, we see a side of Kennedy rarely glimpsed: vulnerable, conflicted, and human.