The draconian Texas antiabortion law that went into effect on September 1 "is a staging ground for a human rights crisis for American women," writes actor and mother Uma Thurman in a poignant, heartbreaking op-ed for the Washington Post. For the first time, she opened up about her "darkest secret," the decision to have an abortion when she was "accidentally impregnated by a much older man" as a teenager.
"In the hope of drawing the flames of controversy away from the vulnerable women on whom this law will have an immediate effect, I am sharing my own experience," Thurman wrote. She recounted the early days of her acting career, when she was often the only adolescent in a room full of adults, and the shock of finding herself pregnant and living out of a suitcase in Europe, far from her family, about to start a job. Though she wanted to keep the baby, she wasn't capable of caring for a child while barely keeping herself afloat. She consulted with her parents — it was their first time ever discussing sex, "and it was terrible for all of us," Thurman wrote — and they agreed an abortion was the right answer. "My heart was broken nonetheless," she noted.
