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September 22, 2021, 7:32 am
The new abortion restrictions in Texas has caused a number of people to come forward and tell their own stories in hopes that those who oppose abortion rights will start to understand what’s actually at stake. And now, Uma Thurman is among them.
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The actress penned an op-ed for The Washington Post, published Tuesday, sharing for the first time that she had an abortion herself in her late teens.
“I was accidentally impregnated by a much older man,” she wrote. “I was living out of a suitcase in Europe, far from my family, and about to start a job. I struggled to figure out what to do. I wanted to have the baby, but how?”
Thurman says she had a long and hard conversation with her parents over the phone, which allowed her to actually think practically through what having a baby would entail and realized that she had no ability to properly care for a child at that point in her life. She called her relationship with the man who impregnated her “not viable” and pointed to her lack of financial stability as reasons she ultimately decided to go ahead and get an abortion.
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“My heart was broken nonetheless,” she admitted.
People who have gotten abortions have often been made to feel ashamed, like either getting pregnant to begin with or coming to terms with the fact that they weren’t ready to have a child for whatever reason is a burden they have to carry quietly on their own forever. Even with all her subsequent success, and the three children she did have when she was ready, Thurman bore that same burden, calling her abortion her “darkest secret until now.”
“I have no regrets for the path I have traveled,” she wrote. “The abortion I had as a teenager was the hardest decision of my life, one that caused me anguish then and that saddens me even now, but it was the path to the life full of joy and love that I have experienced. Choosing not to keep that early pregnancy allowed me to grow up and become the mother I wanted and needed to be.”
Thurman went on to denounce the way the law will disproportionately affect women who don’t have the financial means to circumvent it and will create “new vigilantes” who will take advantage of the inconceivable bounty hunting aspect of it all.
“I can assure you that no one finds herself on that table on purpose,” she said.
While there’s no doubt that proponents of Texas’ draconian fetal heartbeat law are slandering Thurman on the dark corners of the internet where they bask in their echo chambers, many have shown her support for her decision and her criticism of the new restrictions.
Uma Thurman’s “darkest secret” is shared by *one in four* American women. If you haven’t had an abortion, someone you know and love has. https://t.co/SeQSrPuUZk
— Callanite
(@Callanite) September 22, 2021
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“In revealing the hole that this decision carved in me, I hope that some light will shine through, reaching women and girls who might feel a shame that they can’t protect themselves from and have no agency over,” Thurman wrote.
*First Published: September 22, 2021, 7:32 am
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