Having an unwanted pregnancy is hardly easy, but having one in America is just that tougher. Jemima Kirke – who plays Jessa in Girls – should know, as she had one in 2007 as a student and was so stumped for cash she did the procedure without an anaesthetic.
In a PSA for the Center for Reproductive Rights, Jemima explained how she became pregnant while at college in Providence, and ‘I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be attached to this person for the rest of my life. My life was just not conducive to raising a healthy, happy child. I just didn’t feel it was fair.’
So she got an abortion. But in a world of privatised healthcare, which more often than not means people must rely on employers to provide their health insurance, she had to pay for it herself. She was ‘out of pocket… I did have to empty my checking account… and get some from my boyfriend’.
And, to cut costs, she had the procedure done without anaesthetic: ‘The anaesthesia wasn’t that much more, but when you’re scrounging for, you know, however many hundreds of dollars – it’s a lot, I just didn’t have it.’
She explained how it’s obstacles like this, and the shame that surrounds abortion, which means that women really aren’t as free as they’d think they are: ‘We think we do have free choice… but there are these little hoops we have to jump through.’
Hopefully this can change, though, because Jemima wants a better world for her step-daughter and daughter, explaining: ‘I would love if when they’re older, and they’re in their teens or their twenties, if the political issues surrounding their bodies were not there anymore.’
Hear, hear!
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.