‘Law & Order’ Actress Stephanie March Regrets ‘Wrong Decision’ to Get Breast Implants

“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” actress Stephanie March has opened up about her “wrong decision” to get breast augmentation surgery in 2014, revealing a number of health scares that followed the procedure.

“I now know that my decision to have a breast augmentation in 2014 was the wrong decision, for so many reasons,” she wrote in a Refinery29 essay. “I was 39 years old, and my life was disintegrating. Couldn’t get a job I wanted on camera, couldn’t get attention for my production projects, couldn’t travel the world far enough or fast enough or immerse myself in philanthropy enough to make it all go away … The other thing that was happening was that my marriage of nearly 10 years (and 14 together) was falling apart. And nothing, nothing was helping me cope.”

Adding that she couldn’t fix her life, she decided to “try one last thing” — plastic surgery.

“I decided to change my body because I couldn’t change my life,” she wrote. “In retrospect, there were signals that this might not be the right path for me. Every implant I tried on seemed alien, too large. I didn’t feel ready to throw away my pretty bras. I worried that I’d look top-heavy. But I ignored the signs and soldiered on.”

March got the surgery, but one day in October woke up with an infected implant. After being shot with antibiotics, she decided to reinsert the implant, which again became infected and ruptured on Christmas Eve.

“The problem wasn’t something anyone could have prevented or predicted — it was that I am allergic to implants,” she explained. “Plain and simple. My body did. Not. Want. Them. I kept trying to ‘fix’ my body, and it kept telling me to leave it alone.”

Since the surgery, March says her life has turned around for the better. She has expanded her business, moved into a new apartment and traveled. “And yes,” she says, “a new person has seen my breasts.

“But finally, once and for all, this isn’t about what anyone else thinks,” she concluded. “It really does not matter anymore. I have accepted this episode as a part of my larger story. And I refuse to be ashamed of it. I am taking back my body, my story and myself in a bathing suit. Today, the scars are fading into fine white lines. My breasts are small, well proportioned, and just right for my body. Every day, the evidence of all that happened fades a little more, and my year of living terribly recedes into memory.”

Read her entire essay here.