Uma Thurman is a huge name both on-screen and off. Recently with the Washington Post op-ed., she speaks out as an actress and a mother about the Texas anti-abortion laws. And what shocked her fans was when she shared her own experience with abortion.

According to the 51-year-old actress, her abortion was her “darkest secret.”

Thurman explains her opinion of the law which allows citizens to file lawsuits against anyone involved in any way with an abortion anytime after six weeks. The law also offers a monetary reward of $10,000 in potential civil suits against these individuals. This includes the woman herself, the doctors performing such procedures, and even the Uber drivers who are bringing women to these abortion destinations.

She said, “I have followed the course of Texas’s radical antiabortion law with great sadness, and something akin to horror. Now, in the hope of drawing the flames of controversy away from the vulnerable women on whom this law will have an immediate effect, I am sharing my own experience. You might not be interested in the opinions of an actress, but given this new outrage, I feel it is my responsibility to stand up in their shoes.”

Then her big reveal followed. The actress shared, “I started my acting career at 15, working in an environment where I was often the only kid in the room. In my late teens, I was accidentally impregnated by a much older man. I was living out of a suitcase in Europe, far from my family, and about to start a job. I struggled to figure out what to do. I wanted to keep the baby, but how?”

When she called her family to share the news, she found out that her mother was sick while her father was at her bedside. She said, “My childish fantasy of motherhood was soundly corrected as I weighed answers to their very precise questions. I was just starting out in my career and didn’t have the means to provide a stable home, even for myself.”

As a result, the entire family decided that she couldn’t go through with the pregnancy. They all agreed that terminating it was their only option. “My heart was broken nonetheless,” she said.

She traveled to Germany to get an abortion from a doctor that was recommended by a friend. She continued, “My fingers were tightly locked across my chest, and when the procedure was done the doctor looked down at me said, ‘You have beautiful hands — you remind me of my daughter.’ That single gesture of humanity is seared in my mind as one of the most compassionate moments I have ever experienced. In his eyes, I was a person, I was a daughter, I was still a girl.”

She further wrote, “There is so much pain in this story. It has been my darkest secret until now.”

Thurman explained that though it was a painful decision to make, choosing not to keep that early pregnancy allowed her to grow up and become the mother she wanted and needed to be when she was ready.

Uma Thurman is hoping that her story will lessen the shame of other women, the shame that’s furthered by these laws.