Angelina Jolie has ovaries removed over cancer fears

New York: Actress Angelina Jolie has taken the drastic step of having her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed so her children will never have to say, “Mom died of ovarian cancer.”

The 39-year-old Oscar-winning star revealed Monday night that she underwent the surgery last week, and that the doctor who performed the operation treated her mother — who died of ovarian cancer at age 56.

The operation came two years after Jolie underwent a double mastectomy because she carried a mutation in the BRACA1 gene, giving her an 87% chance of getting breast cancer.

In an opinion piece in a leading daily, she describes how she lost her mother, grandmother and aunt to cancer and had been planning the latest operation for some time.

A routine test which indicated possible abnormalities prompted her to have her ovaries removed, she wrote.

“I know my children will never have to say, ‘Mom died of ovarian cancer,’” Jolie wrote.

Writing the piece will help inform the decisions of other women, she said in the article, explaining how she decided that the challenges of undergoing a forced menopause because of the operation was a price worth paying.

The actress, who made her name in the Tomb Raider films, has six children and is a humanitarian ambassador for the United Nations.

She announced in November than she plans to give up acting to focus on directing and her other work.