Girls’ Jemima Kirke defends getting an abortion in college

As a mother and stepmother of girls, Jemima Kirke said standing up for women’s reproductive rights is more important to her now than ever before.

“I’m already anticipating their issues with self-esteem, their issues with their body, the whole luggage that comes with being a woman,” the actress said in a video for the Center for Reproductive Rights. “I would love if when they’re older and they’re in their teens or in their 20s, that the political issues surrounding their body were not there anyone. That they have one less thing to battle around their bodies.”

That’s a subject Jemima has personal experience with because, as she explained in the video, she chose to get an abortion in 2007 when she was a college student.

“I became pregnant with my boyfriend at the time. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be attached to this person for the rest of my life,” Jemima, now 29, said. “My life was just not conducive to raising a happy, healthy child. I just didn’t feel it was fair.”

As a poor college student, Jemima felt like she was in between a rock and hard place.

“I realized that if I didn’t take the anesthesia, I would be able to afford to do this,” she said. “The anesthesia was only, it wasn’t that much more, but when you’re scrounging for however many hundreds of dollars, it is a lot. I just didn’t have it. It’s these obstacles and it’s this stigma that makes these things not completely unavailable.”

For the Center for Reproductive Rights’ Draw the Line Campaign, Padma Lakshmi also opened up about having endometriosis, Meryl Streep encouraged people to sign the Bill of Reproductive Rights and Mark Ruffalo talked about his mother’s illegal abortion before Roe v. Wade was passed.