American actress Lena Dunham, 30, who shot to fame with her TV show, "Girls," recently got into trouble over her remarks about abortion during her podcast "Women of the Hour."
Dunham issued a statement apologising for the "distasteful joke" and said that she regrets it.
Dunham had said, "Something I've thought about a lot is the fact that there is stigma around abortion." She goes on to talk about her visit to a planned parenthood in Texas where women were sharing their abortion stories.
"I sort of jumped. '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. Even I, the woman who cares as much as anybody about a woman's right to choose, felt it was important that people know I was unblemished in this department," Lena continued.
"Now I can say that I still haven't had an abortion, but I wish I had," she added.
Critics, who are already exasperated over Dunham's foot-in-mouth outrageous comments, pointed out that abortion isn't something one wishes for. One Twitter user poked fun at Dunham saying that if she visited a burns victim unit in a hospital she'd say she wished she got burnt too.
Others pointed out how abortion is about having access to reproductive rights and making a choice, it didn't mean that abortion was the norm.
Dunham, later apologised, saying:
"My 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.
I'm so proud of the medley of voices in the episode. I truly hope a distasteful joke on my part won't diminish the amazing work of all the women who participated. My words were spoken from a sort of "delusional girl" persona I often inhabit, a girl who careens between wisdom and ignorance (that's what my TV show is too) and it didn't translate. That's my fault. I would never, ever intentionally trivialise the emotional and physical challenges of terminating a pregnancy.
My only goal is to increase awareness and decrease stigma. I take reproductive choice in America more seriously than I take literally anything else, and therefore own full responsibility for any words I speak that don't convey this truth clearly.
I know plenty of people will never like a thing that leaves my lips, mea culpas or no, but this apology is for the women who have placed their trust in me. You mean everything to me. My life is and always will be devoted to reproductive justice and freedom. You know how in some households you curse and have to put money in a jar? Well in mine, if you mess up your pro-choice messaging you have to give a sizable donation to abortion funds (https://abortionfunds.org/need-abortion) in New York, Texas and Ohio. I look forward to fighting with you all for the next four years and beyond.
The statement, which she posted on Instagram, comes with the picture of the word "Choice."
The debate around abortion rights has been tense recently after the election of Republican candidate Donald Trump as president-elect in the US. The Republican party has a conservative view against abortion and the hardline leaders want to do away with it.
