Amy Brenneman: ‘I’ve Never, Not For One Moment, Regretted My Abortion’

Executive producer Amy Brenneman speaks onstage during the 'Heartbeat' panel dis
Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images
Dr. Susan Berry

Actress Amy Brenneman says in a column in Cosmopolitan that Texas’ 2013 abortion safety law – which was challenged in a case brought before the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday – would block women from their constitutional right to an abortion – a right that she says she exercised in her junior year at Harvard.

Brenneman shares her “abortion story”:

In the spring of my junior year at Harvard, my period was late. I had been in a relationship for almost two years with a loving and supportive boyfriend. We used birth control, but it malfunctioned. When I learned I was pregnant, I knew immediately and without question that I wanted an abortion. I had no desire to be a mother at that time — I wanted to finish college and start my career.

We found a doctor in the yellow pages.  We went to his clean and respectable office. I had the procedure done with no pain; my boyfriend was with me the whole time. Afterward, I breathed huge sigh of relief and thought to myself, I get my life back! I was grateful that I lived in a country where forced birth was not the law of the land and where motherhood was not a lifelong consequence for a contraception slip.

“I have never, not for one moment, regretted my abortion,” Brenneman writes. “My abortion story is absolutely uneventful. It has left no scars.”

Brenneman continues that her own abortion has made her even more committed to abortion rights so that people can have only the children they can support.

“My husband of 20 years and I became parents when we had built a home to nurture our children,” the actress states. “Indeed, being a parent has only strengthened my commitment to reproductive justice as access to legal abortion allows children a fighting chance to be born into families that desire them and can support them.”

U.S. Rep. Diane Black rallied in favor of the Texas law that Brenneman opposes. It requires abortionists to hold privileges at local hospitals and requires abortion clinics to have the same safety standards as other outpatient surgical facilities. Still, Black tells Breitbart News she can understand the anxiety of a young college student – as Brenneman was – facing an unplanned pregnancy.

“As a nurse and a mother, I empathize with women like Amy Brenneman who have found themselves in unplanned pregnancies,” Black says. “I also agree with Ms. Brenneman that we must protect every woman’s right ‘to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ – but that all starts with first defending their right to see the light of day.”

Black – who is a member of the House select panel investigating fetal tissue donation practices – continues:

Those who frame abortion as a means of female empowerment don’t tell the truth. Abortion hurts women and studies show that, worldwide, it disproportionately discriminates against baby girls.

Specific to Ms. Brenneman’s message on Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, I would ask what is ‘onerous’ about requiring abortion clinics to abide by the same safety standards as other outpatient surgery centers, or asking abortionists to have admitting privileges at a local hospital in the event of complications? I am unapologetically pro-life and I reject the violence of abortion outright, but I also believe that no mother should die as a result of an unlicensed, unregulated abortion clinic or a fly-by-night abortion doctor. That is what the Texas law at the center of the Supreme Court case aims to prevent. Those who cast themselves as champions of women’s rights should applaud these commonsense standards, not attempt to turn back the clock and strip them away.

Black has made her pro-life cause about both the safety of women and the protection of the unborn. Speaking during the House select panel’s first public hearing on fetal tissue donation practices Wednesday, Black said, “I am curious that we don’t have that same dignity and respect for the life of what we call ‘tissue’ and ‘fetus’ and ‘embryo.’ This is a baby . . . This is not tissue. You don’t get a brain, a liver, a kidney, all of these organs from a ‘tissue,’ it is a baby.”

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America – the largest group of pro-life millennials in the United States – also understands the dilemma of a young college student who finds herself in Brenneman’s situation with an unplanned pregnancy.

Still, Hawkins tells Breitbart News, “Americans – especially millennials who grew up with ultrasound technology – know that it’s not just another medical procedure, but the ending of a life, and for that reason, abortion will always have a stigma attached to it.”

“Pro-abortion activists are pulling out all the stops to destigmatize abortion and to try to normalize the intentional taking of a human life,” she continues. “No matter how many celebrities or politicians or anyone else who tells their story of abortion, it does not take away the fact that lives were ended and families irreparably harmed because of those choices.”

As Hawkins observes as well, “The pro-abortion side is desperate to show that abortion is just another medical procedure, but it’s not.”

Ironically, however, those who take Brenneman’s position against the Texas safety law now before the high court are in a curious conflict. They have spent years attempting to push the narrative that abortion is “health care” for women that should even be covered by “health insurance” like other “medical” procedures. Yet, they balk at having to submit to the same requirements that are demanded of others in the “medical” and “health” industries.

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