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Uma Thurman reveals she had an abortion in her teens

"Choosing not to keep that early pregnancy allowed me to grow up and become the mother I wanted and needed to be.”
/ Source: TODAY

Uma Thurman is condemning the new Texas abortion law by sharing a deeply personal story.

In a Washington Post op-ed published Tuesday, the "Kill Bill" actor, 51, revealed that she terminated a pregnancy in the 1980s.

“I started my acting career at 15, working in an environment where I was often the only kid in the room,” Thurman wrote. “In my late teens, I was accidentally impregnated by a much older man. 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.”

After discussing options with her parents, a heartbroken Thurman concluded that she “couldn’t go through with the pregnancy.” She would later go on to have three children: daughters, Maya, 23, and Luna, 9, and son Levon, 19.

“The abortion I had as a teenager was the hardest decision of my life, one that caused me anguish then and that saddens me now, but it was the path to the life full of joy and love that I have experienced,” she explained. “Choosing not to keep that early pregnancy allowed me to grow up and become the mother I wanted and needed to be.”

In opening up about what she called her “darkest secret,” Thurman hopes 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.”

“To all of you — to women and girls of Texas, afraid of being traumatized and hounded by predatory bounty hunters; to all women outraged by having our bodies’ rights taken by the state; and to all of you who are made vulnerable and subjected to shame because you have a uterus — I say: I see you,” she wrote. “Have courage. You are beautiful. You remind me of my daughters.”

The controversial piece of legislation, that went into effect September 1, bans abortions after six weeks of gestation, long before many women even know they are pregnant. It applies to cases where the woman was impregnated as a result of rape or incest.

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