Actress Uma Thurman has retaliated against Texas’ controversial abortion law by bravely penning an essay about an abortion she had as a teenager.
The actress wrote an op-ed article for the Washington Post in which she revisited her own experience. In the article Thurman, who is now a mother of three, said that “choosing not to keep that early pregnancy allowed me to grow up and become the mother I wanted and needed to be.”
Thurman admitted that penning the letter may cause her to experience backlash, but she wanted to do so so that women who associate abortion with shame may gain some clarity.
I have nothing to gain from this disclosure, and perhaps much to lose. 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. I can assure you that no one finds herself on that table on purpose,” she wrote in the powerful essay.
The bill for the new Texas abortion law was signed on May 19th, 2021 and enforced on September 1st, 2021. This law bans abortions after there is the detection of “a foetal heartbeat”, which usually happens around the six-week mark.
In the article, Thurman addressed the Texas law specifically.
“The Texas abortion law was allowed to take effect without argument by the Supreme Court, which, due in no small part to its lack of ideological diversity, is a staging ground for a human rights crisis for American women. 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 face little risk,” she wrote.
Thurman isn’t the only celebrity to take a stand against the new law. In May Bette Midler called on women to refuse sex to protest the law.
“I suggest that all women refuse to have sex with men until they are guaranteed the right to choose by Congress,” Midler tweeted Thursday,” Middler tweeted at the time.
