The 'Dancing With the Stars' pro spoke candidly following the Supreme Court's reversal of the Roe v. Wade decision.
Dancing With The Stars pro Cheryl Burke opened up about having an abortion following the Supreme Court's reversal of the Roe v. Wade decision on Friday.
"I am saddened by the news this morning, and it weighs heavy in my heart because I had an abortion when I was 18 years old," Burke said in a TikTok. "If it wasn’t for places like Planned Parenthood, I would be a mother."
Burke went on to say that her access to healthcare allowed her to build the life she loves now. "I wouldn’t have been a great mother," she said, "and I definitely wouldn’t be sitting here with you today."
Burke is not the first celeb to speak out against the Supreme Court ruling, but her story is one of the most personal. "I got an abortion while I was going through a really huge transition in my life," she said amid several deep breaths. "I was practicing safe sex, I was using protection, and I was on birth control, but sh*t happens."
In the video, she also recalled her experience arriving at the Planned Parenthood clinic and walking past the picket line of pro-life protesters to get to her doctor. "That alone was traumatic," she said, "but on top of it the whole process is traumatic and now that you're making it illegal to make that decision about our own bodies is absolute insanity."
The decision undoes nearly 50 years of precedent and will have sweeping ramifications for women, trans men, and non-binary people across the country as abortion rights are curtailed, particularly in GOP-led states in the South and Midwest, and lead to a patchwork of laws absent from constitutional protection. Thirteen states have so-called "trigger laws" on the books, in which abortion will swiftly be outlawed in most cases with Roe v. Wade overturned.
"Today, the Supreme Court not only reversed nearly 50 years of precedent, it relegated the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues—attacking the essential freedoms of millions of Americans," Barack Obama said in a statement shared to Twitter.
Find more celeb reactions here.
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