“Girls” star Jemima Kirke opened up about her own abortion in an effort to help shape a future for other women, including her two young daughters, to have the right to choose without “political issues surrounding their bodies.”
“My life was not conducive to raising a healthy, happy child,” she said about her 2007 abortion in a public service announcement for the Center for Reproductive Rights. “I just didn’t feel it was fair.”
Kirke, now 29 and a series regular on Lena Dunham‘s HBO series, doesn’t want her children to have to “fight for their rights over their bodies.”
“I’m already anticipating their issues with self-esteem, their body, the whole luggage that comes with being a woman,” she said. “And so I would love if, when they’re older, the political issues surrounding their bodies were not there anymore.”
Additionally, Kirke doesn’t want women to go through the “shame and embarrassment” associated with terminating a pregnancy.
Kirke said she was afraid to tell her mother about the abortion, so she emptied her checking account to pay for the procedure, but couldn’t afford the anesthesia at the Planned Parenthood center she visited in Providence, Rhode Island.
“The anesthesia wasn’t that much more, but when you’re scrounging for how many hundreds of dollars, it is a lot,” Kirke said. “It’s these obstacles and it’s this stigma that makes these things not completely unavailable, and that’s the tricky part. We do have free choice, and we are able to do whatever we want, but then there are these little hoops we have to jump through to get them.
“I’ve always felt that reproductive issues should be something that women, especially, should be able to talk about freely, especially amongst each other,” Kirke continued. “And I still see that today — I still see shame and embarrassment around terminating pregnancies, getting pregnant … so I have always been open about my stories.”
“Girls” finished Season 4 earlier this year, and will return for a fifth season.