Lena Dunham wrote an apology on Instagram late Tuesday night after a comment on her podcast about abortion sparked backlash online earlier that day.
“I truly hope a distasteful joke on my part won’t diminish the amazing work of all the women who participated [on the podcast],” she wrote. “I would never, ever intentionally trivialize the emotional and physical challenges of terminating a pregnancy. My only goal is to increase awareness and decrease stigma.”
On the episode of “Women of the Hour,” released last week, Dunham talked about a visit to Planned Parenthood when a girl asked Dunham if she would take part in a project involving women sharing stories about abortions.
“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,” Dunham said on the podcast. “And I realized then that even I was carrying within myself stigma around this issue. Even I, the woman who cares as much as anybody about a woman’s right to choose, felt it was important that people know that I was unblemished in this department.”
She went on to add, “I feel so proud of them for their bravery, for their self-knowledge, and it was a really important moment for me then to realize I had internalized some of what society was throwing at us and I had to put it in the garbage. Now I can say that I still haven’t had an abortion, but I wish I had.”
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Dunham concluded her apology on Tuesday by maintaining that she was “proud of the medley of voices in the episode.” She also wrote that, as someone “devoted to reproductive justice and freedom,” she would make a “sizable donation to abortion funds” and linked to Abortionfunds.org.
Read Dunham’s full apology below:
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