Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin said that she has never regretted having an abortion.
“There were no complications, no problems, no difficulties. I never looked back, and I was never sorry. I never felt like I did something that was inappropriate for me or my family or my situation. I was very, very grateful,” Moore noted, according to ELLE.
The outlet said that the interview was “edited and condensed for clarity.”
The congresswoman said that when she was 18-years-old she had a child, and she became pregnant again when she was around 19.
“I had no money, no job, no occupational preparedness; I wasn’t even able to adequately take care of the one child I had. I was desperate for an abortion,” she noted. “Because of my college connections, I had a network of white feminist women. I got the phone number of a doctor in Madison, Wisconsin, and he referred me to a fund. It was run by these primarily upper-middle-class white women who provided funding for abortion care. They gave me the money for a round-trip ticket to New York City and a car service to and from the facility.”
“I really needed to reclaim my life, and having an abortion made a huge difference. I was able to get a degree. I was able to get some work skills under my belt and lean into my talents. I had my second child when my daughter was eight years old, and those eight years really made a difference in terms of making sure I wasn’t permanently mired in poverty,” the congresswoman said.
Moore, who has served in Congress since 2005, had her abortion before the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling.
A leaked Supreme Court draft opinion indicates that the high court appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives,” the draft opinion reads.