Sunday 8 May 2022 07:14 AM Ashley Judd pays tribute to mom Naomi and blasts Roe v. Wade reversal in Op-Ed trends now
Ashley Judd took aim at the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade in an Op-Ed honoring her late mother Naomi as she celebrates her first Mothers Day without her.
Judd, 54, penned the Op-Ed for USA Today in which she remembered her late mother Naomi Judd, who reportedly killed herself last month a day before she was set to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
'This Sunday is abruptly, shockingly, my first Mother's Day without my mama,' the actress wrote. 'She died just days before my sister and I could show her again how much we love and honor her.
'It wasn't supposed to be this way. I was supposed to visit her on Sunday, to give her a box of old-fashioned candy, our family tradition,' Judd added. 'Instead, I am unmoored. But my heart is not empty. It is replete with gratitude for what she left behind. Her nurture and tenderness, her music and memory.'
Judd, known for her roles in such movies as 'Kiss the Girls,' 'Double Jeopardy' and 'Heat' also wrote about her mother's journey with mental illness and how despite having motherhood forced on to her, she still did her best.
Judd wrote that her mother 'had to fight like hell to overcome the hand she was dealt, to earn her place in history,'
Ashley and her sister Wynonna - (pictured together) who performed with Naomi for years in 'The Judds' - revealed she had succumbed to the 'disease of mental illness'
Judd described her 'incandescent rage' at the possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned, citing maternal death rates, and the high murder and suicide rates of pregnant women
'Motherhood happened to her without her consent,' Judd wrote. 'She experienced an unintended pregnancy at age 17, and that led her down a road familiar to so many adolescent mothers, including poverty and gender-based violence.'
Judd wrote that her mother 'had to fight like hell to overcome the hand she was dealt, to earn her place in history,' adding: 'She shouldn't have had to fight that hard to share her gifts with the world.'
The actress then describes her 'incandescent rage' at the possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned, citing maternal death rates, and the high murder and suicide rates of pregnant women.
'Motherhood should always be a choice. Does that sound radical to you? Does that sound like I wish my sister and I hadn't been born? If that's what you think, I will gladly direct my incandescent rage at you,' she wrote.
'How much could we, as a society, possibly value motherhood when it is assumed to be an inevitability? When we accept as normal that women and girls will drop out of school and the workforce because they are expected to take on the unpaid labor of child care? When we fail to protect girls from poverty and violence?' she
