Leena Dunham apologized for saying she wished she had had an abortion. The remark was a joke, she claims.
Ha ha ha. ROTFL. Not.
The 30-year-old actress took to Instagram on Tuesday to apologize for recent comments made on her Women of the Hour podcast, in which she stated that she hadn’t had an abortion, but wished that she had.
“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,” Dunham began her apology, before trying to explain that she intended her comments to be taken in jest.
In the podcast, Dunham discussed a time when she was asked to share her abortion story during a visit to Planned Parenthood, even though she had never had one, and explained that she realized, by being proud of the fact that she had never had an abortion, she was encouraging the stigma against the practice.
“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 show is too) and it didn’t translate. That’s my fault,” she said. “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.”
“I take reproductive choice in America more seriously than I take literally anything,
Literally? Literally!
and therefore own full responsibility for any words I speak that don’t convey this clearly. I know plenty of people will never like a thing I have to say, mea culpas or no, but this apology is for the women who have placed their trust in me,” she continued.
“You mean everything to me. My life is and always will be devoted to reproductive justice and freedom,” she shared, before announcing that she had given a “sizable donation” to abortion funds in New York, Texas and Ohio.