Despite popular belief, many of the most basic details regarding Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe’s brief, glittering life and terrible death remain unknown or undocumented. Even Norma Jeane, her legal name, is frequently forgotten.

Blonde, a new Netflix original movie starring Ana de Armas, brings the actress back into the national limelight. Marilyn’s ascent to popularity, as well as her actual and imagined relationships with the men in her life, are reimagined in the fictitious movie that is based on Joyce Carol Oates’ novel. People are still interested in learning more about her legacy and, specifically, whether she had any children after her untimely passing.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Blonde depicts Marilyn miscarrying and terminating a pregnancy, and at one point, Marilyn converses with the baby inside of her. However, many of these fictionalized scenes in movies leave viewers wondering whether Marilyn really did get pregnant in certain situations.

Did Marilyn ever have kids?

No, despite having three marriages (the first to James Dougherty, the second to Joe DiMaggio, and the third to writer Arthur Miller), Marilyn never had children.

According to the Netflix 2022 documentary The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes, she became pregnant three times while she was married to Arthur Miller. Each time, she had an abortion.

The Some Like It Hot director saw that Marilyn wasn’t herself during filming during her third pregnancy. Marilyn had a hard time filming the movie, director Billy Wilder said to journalist Anthony Summers in a Netflix documentary video.

“I had no problem with Monroe. Monroe had problems with Monroe. She had problems with herself,” Wilder said in the audio recording.

Marilyn Monroe allegedly had 12 abortions, and they seriously harmed her.

The Genius and the Goddess: Arthur Miller & Marilyn Monroe is a biography on Marilyn and Miller written by Miller’s friend Jeffrey Meyers. The author said that Marilyn had admitted to having a startling total of 12 abortions, however it is unclear whether or not she voluntarily had them. In the past, Marilyn frequently engaged in extramarital affairs with men, and abortion was used as “birth control” in the 1950s. “When selling herself, or with romantic liaisons and long-time lovers, Marilyn, always eager to please, meekly agreed to men’s demands to have sex without contraceptives and got pregnant again and again,” he writes.

Meyers claims that in less than 20 years, Marilyn also dealt with seven attempts at suicide, two miscarriages, one ectopic pregnancy (in which the fertilized egg is outside the womb), various reproductive problems, and many hospitalizations.

“Marilyn’s most persistent medical problems were gynecological, most probably the result of her dozen illegal abortions,” Meyers added. “These back-alley procedures may have caused infections and adhesions that either prevented pregnancy or led to miscarriages.” We can see why Marilyn’s abortions and infertility problems would have had an effect on her mental health if it is true that she wished nothing more than to be a mother.

In the 1950s, fertility awareness and contraceptives weren’t really a thing, and, well, the men that Marilyn was having affairs with obviously didn’t care about her. Therefore, despite her reputation as a global queen who exuded confidence and vivacity, her lifestyle in Hollywood, which included promiscuity and drug use, was far from empowering. Additionally, it’s possible that many of the guys she was associated with mistreated and assaulted her. Having said that, Marilyn suffered from severe mental illness. In his book, Meyers describes how she was filthy because of her sadness and says, “But dirtiness, especially in a woman who spends most of the day beautifying herself, was a sure sign of mental illness. When depressed she even went out in public with menstrual stains on the back of her dress.”