Lena Dunham Responds to Backlash Over ‘Distasteful Joke’ About Abortion

Lena Dunham is walking back from what she admitted was a “distasteful joke” about abortion on a recent episode of her podcast.

“My latest podcast episode was meant to tell a multifaceted story about reproductive choice in America, to explain the many reasons women do or don’t choose to have children and what bodily autonomy really means,” the “Girls” star wrote on Instagram.

Dunham recalled on podcast “Women of the Hour” a time she was asked by Planned Parenthood to share her abortion story.

“I wanted to make it really clear to her, that as much as I was going out and fighting for other women’s options, I myself had never had an abortion,” the comedic actress said.

[...] many people I love – my mother, my best friends – have had to have abortions for all kinds of reasons, Dunham continued at the time.

[...] here’s how Dunham concluded her Instagram explanation:

“I take reproductive choice in America more seriously than I take literally anything else, and therefore own full responsibility for any words I speak that don’t convey this truth clearly,” she wrote.