Jennifer Lawrence, ever candid and fearlessly outspoken, has just endorsed Kamala Harris in the presidential run and delivered an important message to all voters.
As she explained it to People.com in a new interview, everyone should vote because “women are dying” and “abortion is literally on the ballot.”
“I’m voting for Kamala Harris because I think she’s an amazing candidate and I know that she will do whatever she can to protect reproductive rights,” she said. “That’s the most important thing, is to not let somebody into the White House who is going to ban abortion.”
Lawrence is currently working on two documentary projects dealing with women’s rights. One is called Bread and Roses, and follows the tale of three women living in Afghanistan under Taliban’s oppressive rule. The second one, Zurawski v Texas, is about just what its title implies, the case of Amanda Zurawski and several others in the state of Texas, who, due to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, were unable to receive proper medical attention. Amanda herself, denied the choice to have an abortion, went into septic shock twice and lost her uterine tubes as a result.
“[These women] who have gone through what no human being should ever, ever endure,” The Hunger Games star continues. “They put it on display so that it doesn’t happen to other women. They’re not thinking about their suffering. They’re using their suffering to help other people, and it’s heroic.”
Lawrence finishes with a stark, poignant, and to-the-point reminder: “Women are dying,” and it’s important that such films “enlighten people’s idea of what abortion is and why certain people need abortions — and why it’s so important to keep lawmakers out of families and out of people’s doctors’ offices. These laws are made by random white men and they’re not made by healthcare providers.”
The Oscar-winning star has been a champion of women’s rights in Hollywood for years, and has made no secret her disdain for Donald Trump and his authoritarian, extremist ways. Back in October 2022, during a profile cover for Vogue, Lawrence expressed her befuddlement that Americans should choose “a dangerous, dangerous jar of mayonnaise” over a woman, referring to the 2016 presidential election when Trump went up against Hilary Clinton.
For Lawrence, this entanglement with politics is a deeply personal matter. For years now, she has been estranged from her own relatives, even her father, over deeply misaligned beliefs. It all seems to have started with the contentious 2016 election.
“I just worked so hard in the last five years to forgive my dad and my family and try to understand: It’s different. The information they are getting is different, their lives are different,” she said in the 2022 Vogue profile. “I’ve tried to get over it and I really can’t. I can’t. I’m sorry I’m just unleashing, but I can’t f–k with people who aren’t political anymore. You live in the United States of America. You have to be political. It’s too dire. Politics are killing people.”
And now, she’s doubling down on her stance yet again by endorsing Kamala Harris. It must take an incredible amount of courage to stand up even to one’s own family, but as Lawrence prudently points out, at some point, the game of politics stops being a game and becomes a matter of life and death, and never has that been truer than today, with the world beset by war and conflict in every corner and polar ideological opposites waging a different, nuanced war on everybody else.
Published: Sep 25, 2024 05:48 pm