Actress Uma Thurman revealed for the first time Tuesday that she aborted her unborn baby when she was a young adult just beginning her career.
Though Thurman insisted that she has “no regrets,” her abortion story is full of pain and trauma. She admitted that, after more than three decades, it “saddens me even now.”
The 51-year-old actress (“Pulp Fiction,” “Les Misérables”) wrote about her abortion in an op-ed at the Washington Post. She also criticized the new Texas heartbeat law, which is saving as many as 100 babies and mothers from pain, regret and death every day.
“This law is yet another discriminatory tool against those who are economically disadvantaged, and often, indeed, against their partners,” Thurman wrote. She slammed the pro-life law as “something akin to horror,” claiming it is “a staging ground for a human rights crisis for American women.”
She seemed to be trying to convince herself that her abortion and others’ are ok, despite the pain and loss that she experienced.
Thurman said her abortion was her “darkest secret until now,” and she wanted her baby.
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“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. I wanted to keep the baby, but how?” she wrote.
“I was just starting out in my career and didn’t have the means to provide a stable home, even for myself,” she continued.
She called her parents, who were well-off and could have supported her and her child. Instead, they discouraged her and told her to have an abortion.
“My childish fantasy of motherhood was soundly corrected as I weighed answers to their very precise questions,” she said. “We decided as a family that I couldn’t go through with the pregnancy, and agreed that termination was the right choice.
“My heart was broken nonetheless,” Thurman continued.
In Germany, she underwent a very painful abortion procedure, and later told herself that she deserved the pain that she suffered.
More than 30 years later, Thurman said she still feels sad when she thinks about her abortion. However, she convinced herself that aborting her unborn baby – despite her pain and the death of her child – was right for her and it’s right for other women, too.
“I have no regrets for the path I have traveled,” she wrote. “…The abortion I had as a teenager was the hardest decision of my life, one that caused me anguish then and that saddens me even now, but it was the path to the life full of joy and love that I have experienced. Choosing not to keep that early pregnancy allowed me to grow up and become the mother I wanted and needed to be.”
Thurman’s tragic story demonstrates just how anti-woman and anti-child abortion really is. Instead of living a life of hope and joy and love, she has lived with decades of pain and loss.
At a time when she should have been supported and empowered by the people closest to her – her parents and her baby’s father, she was told instead that she was not strong enough or capable enough to be a mother. She was told that she needed to kill her own child to succeed.
Now, Thurman is advancing the notion that it’s ok for other women – and those who should be supporting them – to do the same. To neglect to support a mother in need and tell her to kill her unborn child instead.
That is not empowerment or freedom. It is not courageous or loving. Abortions do not help women in difficult situations; they destroy unborn babies’ lives and often leave mothers with a lifetime of regret. Abortions also give society an excuse not to provide the much more difficult but essential long-term support that families in need deserve.
There is forgiveness and healing for parents who regret aborting their unborn babies. Many pro-life advocates are post-abortive mothers and fathers who understand all too well the pain and destruction of abortion. Programs including Rachel’s Vineyard, Heartbeat International, Surrendering the Secret and Passages of Hope offer counseling, retreats, Bible studies and more to help parents heal and seek forgiveness for the deaths of their babies to abortion.
