Anne Hathaway: ‘Abortion Can Be Another Word for Mercy’

Actress Anne Hathaway said Tuesday on ABC’s “The View” that in her “own personal experience” with abortion that it could be “another word for mercy.”

Co-host Joy Behar said, “While we are on the topic of that, ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ turned 16 this summer. Time flies. You wrote this on Instagram, quote, ‘I’m struck by the fact that the young female characters in this movie built their careers in a country that honored their right to have freedom over their reproductive rights. See you in the fight.’ Why was it important for you to write something like that?”

Hathaway said, “Because we’re in the fight. We’re in the fight every day. We’re in the fight every minute. And you mentioned ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ turning sweet 16. Some 16-year-old’s life has been irrevocably changed because of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And I played a young woman who was starting out her career. And when you are a young woman starting out your career, your reproductive destiny matters a great deal. It had just happened, and I just think about it all the time. What its implications are and what it means to live in a country that puts us in this position.”

She continued, “By the way, this is not a moral conversation about abortion. This is a practical conversation about women’s rights and, by the way, human rights because women’s rights are human rights and the freedom we all need to be able to choose and build our lives and have access to excellent health care.”

She added, “May I just one other thing, without going into too many details, my own personal experience with abortion, abortion can be another word for mercy. We don’t know. We don’t know. We know that no two pregnancies are alike, and it follows that no two lives are alike. It follows that no two conceptions are alike. So how can we have a law? How can we have a point of view on this that says we must treat everything the same? Where I come at it from is when you allow for choice, you allow for flexibility which is what we need in order to be human.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN