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Uma Thurman spoke out against the “horror” of Texas’ draconian new abortion law and called for the ban to be lifted, as she spoke out about an abortion she suffered as a teenager.
Writing for the Washington Post, the actor first described his abortion publicly, calling it “the darkest secret.” She wrote about how she was “accidentally pregnant with a much older man” in her late teens and decided to terminate her pregnancy.
She said she was sharing her personal experience “in the hope of stopping the flames of the vulnerable women controversy on whom this law will have an immediate effect.”
The Republican-backed law, which was passed by the state legislature in May and took effect earlier this month, is one of the most extreme abortion laws in the United States, effectively banning almost all abortions in Texas.
State abortion providers have warned the law will create almost insurmountable barriers for vulnerable populations, including teens, low-income people and people of color, including undocumented immigrants. About 70% of abortions in Texas in 2019 were performed on women of color, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
The law prohibits abortions once healthcare professionals can detect embryonic heart activity, which is typically around six weeks pregnant – long before many women even know they are pregnant. It allows no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, and only makes narrowly defined exceptions to protect the health of the mother.
It also allows any private citizen to sue an abortion provider who violates them, opening the floodgates to harassing and frivolous lawsuits from anti-abortion vigilantes who could eventually shut down most clinics in the state.
In the passionate editorial, Thurman said she saw the law pass with “great sadness” and “something akin to horror.”
The actor lambasted the Texas ban as “a staging post for a human rights crisis for American women.”
She wrote: “This law is yet another discriminatory tool against those who are economically disadvantaged, and often, indeed, against their partners. Women and children of wealthy families retain all the choices in the world and run little risk. “
She continued: “I am also distressed by the fact that the law pits citizen against citizen, creating new vigilantes who will attack these disadvantaged women, denying them the choice not to have children they are not. equipped to care for, or extinguish their hopes for the future family they might choose.
The Pulp Fiction star shared how she started her acting career young and was alone in Europe, away from family and living in a suitcase, when she found herself pregnant.
Although she wanted to keep the baby, after discussions with her family, she decided that it would be the right choice to have an abortion. This was for a number of reasons, she wrote, including the inability to provide a stable home at this point in her life.
Thurman described the “shame” she internalized during the procedure, adding, “There is so much pain in this story. This has been my darkest secret so far.
“The abortion I had as a teenager was the most difficult decision of my life, one that caused me anguish back then and still saddens me today, but it was the path to the joyful and loving life that I lived. Choosing not to keep this early pregnancy allowed me to grow up to be the mother I wanted and needed to be.
Thurman, who has since had three children, said she spoke in the hope that “some light will shine, reaching women and girls who might be ashamed of not being able to protect themselves and have no no power over them ”.
The law is currently being challenged in court after the Biden administration formally asked a federal judge to block its application.
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