On the latest episode of her podcast Women of the Hour, actress and writer-director Lena Dunham stirred up controversy when she said “I wish I had” an abortion.
READ MORE: ‘Girls’ Season 6 Teaser: Lena Dunham Wants to Leave Her Mark on New York City
Dunham shared an anecdote about her visit to a Texas Planned Parenthood years ago during which a girl asked her to share her experience with abortion. She then recognized her own internalized stigma surrounding the procedure.
“I sort of jumped,” she said. “‘I haven’t had an abortion,’ I told her. I wanted to make it really clear to her that, as much as I was going out and fighting for other women’s options, I myself had never had an abortion. And I realized then that even I was carrying within myself stigma around this issue. Even I, the woman who cares as much as anybody about a woman’s right to choose, felt that it was important that people know that I was unblemished in this department…Now I can say that I still haven’t had an abortion, but I wish I had.”
In the wake of the comment, Dunham has since apologized in an Instagram post, saying that the latest podcast episode was “meant to tell a multifaceted story about reproductive choice in America, to explain the many reasons women do or don’t choose to have children and what bodily autonomy really means” and that she hopes a “distasteful joke on [her] part won’t diminish the amazing work of all the women who participated.” She also pledged to make a sizable donation to abortion funds in New York, Texas and Ohio. Read her full Instagram post below.
Dunham’s TV show “Girls” returns for its sixth and final season on Sunday, February 12 only on HBO.
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