Jennifer Lawrence won’t be sitting on the sidelines after the reversal of Roe v. Wade.
The Academy Award-winning actress said in a recent interview with Vogue that the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the landmark ruling that had granted abortion access in the United States was a watershed moment for her.
“You live in the United States of America – you have to be political. It’s too dire,” she said to the magazine. “Politics are killing people.”
Political disagreements have caused rifts in her Louisville, Kentucky-based family, Lawrence added, since the 2016 election that gave the nation President Donald Trump – whom she referred to as a “dangerous, dangerous jar of mayonnaise.”
But she has attempted over the years – and especially following the recent birth of her son – to heal some of those wounds. “I just worked so hard in the last 5 years to forgive my dad and my family and try to understand” that they are reading and watching news reports that paint political matters in false lights.
It was a regressive, conservative ideology she grew up around, she recalls, and that she didn’t truly shift away from until she saw and experienced more of the world. (And, she adds, until she experienced phenomena like the gender pay gap for herself.)
The loss of abortion access to millions throughout the country struck something notably deep inside of Lawrence, though – especially, she told Vogue, as a new mother, and as someone who experienced two miscarriages. While carrying her son, “I had a great pregnancy. I had a very fortunate pregnancy,” she said. “But every single second of my life was different. And it would occur to me sometimes: ‘What if I was forced to do this?’”
The notion has left Lawrence trying repeatedly to get her Republican relatives to understand how desperate the situation truly is, for poor people in particular – sending family members lengthy texts and voice memos, or calling them directly, she said to Vogue.
And she’ll continue with this fight, she adds. There’s just one thing she simply can’t do now, however: “I can’t f*ck with people who aren’t political anymore.”
