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NEW YORK, April 15 (UPI) -- Actress Jemima Kirke talks about her 2007 abortion as part of a new video campaign for the Center for Reproductive Rights. In the video, the 29-year-old actress, who plays Jessa Johansson on HBO's Girls, says she was in college in Providence, R.I., when she became pregnant and decided to undergo an abortion.
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"My life was just not conducive to raising a happy, healthy child," Kirke says in the video. "I just didn't feel it was fair. So I decided to get an abortion."
Kirke says she didn't want to tell her parents about the abortion and "emptied" her checking account to pay for the procedure. She says she refused anesthesia because she couldn't afford it.
"The anesthesia was only, it 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," Kirke says.
"We do have free choice and we are able to do what we want, but then there are these hoops we have to jump through," she added.
Kirke, who now has an 8-year-old stepdaughter and a 4-year-old daughter, says she's hoping they will be able to be more open about their reproductive rights.
"I'm already anticipating their issues with self-esteem, their issues with their body, the luggage that comes with being a woman," she says. "I would love if, when they're older and they're in their teens or their 20s, the political issues surrounding their bodies are not there anymore, that they have one less thing to battle around their bodies."
