Jemima Kirke (of Girls) wishes to open a discussion on abortion. This is a surprisingly common medical procedure, but many women never tell. According to Planned Parenthood, 3 out of 10 U.S. women will have an abortion before they turn 45. Yet no one talks about it because the associated stigma is huge. There’s one clinic in my state, and the building is constantly surrounded by protestors. And that’s only the public side of things. The private shame of women who have abortions leads to them keeping it almost a complete secret.

Jemima opened up in a PSA for the Center for Reproductive Rights. Jemima (now 29) discusses how she had an abortion at age 22. She was a college student at the time and couldn’t support a child. She doesn’t regret her decision, but she does lament the stigma surrounding reproductive rights. Jemima hopes for a less politicized treatment of these rights when her daughters grow older. It’s not looking good in that regard. Oklahoma and Kansas just passed more restrictions on abortion, and who knows what other states will join them. Here’s the transcript of Jemima’s PSA:

“In 2007, I became pregnant with my boyfriend at the time. 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 I decided to get an abortion, and I went to Planned Parenthood in Providence, Rhode Island where I was at school. Because I couldn’t tell my mother that I was pregnant, I had to pay for it out of pocket. I did have to empty my checking account, what I had in there, and get some from my boyfriend. I realized that if I didn’t take the anesthesia, I would be able to afford to do this. And the anesthesia wasn’t that much more, but when you’re scrounging for however many hundreds of dollars, it is a lot. I just didn’t have it. It’s these obstacles, and it’s the stigma that makes these things not completely unavailable, and that’s the tricky part. We think that we do have free choice, and we are able to do whatever we want, but there’s these little hoops we have to jump through to get there.

I’ve always felt that reproductive issues should be something that women especially should be able to talk about freely, especially amongst each other. And I still see that today. I still see shame and embarrassment around terminating pregnancies, getting pregnant, I still see it. So I have always been open about my stories. Always shared them, especially with other women. I have two daughters, actually. I have a step daughter who’s 8 and I have my younger one who is 4. I’m already anticipating their issues with self esteem, their issues with their body, the whole luggage that comes with being a woman. So I would love that, when they’re older, when they’re in their teens and 20s, that the political issues surrounding their bodies are not there anymore … I would hate to see them fight for rights.”

[From Center for Reproductive Rights on YouTube]

Jemima isn’t complaining about the price of an abortion. She simply had trouble affording one as a college student; and she wishes the stigma of abortion wasn’t so great that she couldn’t tell her own mom. (Not incidentally, E! did some research on the clinic Jemima used. The prices range from $500-800 with sedation costing more. Nowadays, RU-486 is usually cheaper than a surgical abortion but not by much.)

Aside from the cost, more and more restrictions are being passed on abortion, which will only increase the difficulty of getting one. Jemima’s correct — if women are supposedly free to choose, then why are there so many restrictions?

Here’s Jemima’s PSA video.

Photos courtesy of WENN