Lena Dunham Apologizes for Her ‘Distasteful Joke’ on Abortion
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By Thea Glassman December 21, 2016
Lena Dunham has apologized for saying she wished she had gotten an abortion.
The 30-year-old actress faced backlash over a comment she made on her podcast “Women of the Hour” last week, while discussing the stigma that surrounds abortion.
Dunham, a vocal pro-choice advocate, was recounting a time when she was asked to tell her own abortion story.
“One day, when I was visiting a Planned Parenthood in Texas a few years ago, a young girl walked up to me and asked me if I’d like to be a part of her project in which women share their stories of abortions. I sort of jumped. ‘I haven’t had an abortion,’ I told her,” Dunham said. “And I realized then that even I was carrying within myself stigma around this issue.”
This led Dunham to say: “Now I can say that I still haven’t had an abortion, but I wish I had.”
After receiving a swift onslaught of criticism from the internet community, the “Girls” creator took to Instagram to apologize for what she deemed “a distasteful joke.”
“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,” Dunham wrote. “That’s my fault.”
Read her apology in full below:
Thea Glassman is an Associate Editor at the Forward. Reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter at @theakglassman.
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