A second woman has come forward to accuse Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate candidate in Georgia who has compared abortion to murder, of pressuring her into getting an abortion three decades ago.
In a press conference held by celebrity attorney Gloria Allred on Wednesday in Los Angeles, the anonymous woman claimed that, when she was carrying his child, he demanded she terminate her pregnancy, going so far as to take her to an abortion clinic to see it through. “I don’t to believe Herschel is morally fit to be a U.S. senator, and that is the reason I am speaking up and providing proof,” she said.
Appearing on a blank screen on Zoom to protect herself from what she feared would be reprisals, the woman said she was romantically involved for six years with Walker during his NFL days, hopscotching from game to game with him while he was married to his first wife. She learned she was pregnant in April 1993, when the two were living in Dallas and he played for the Cowboys. Walker, according to Allred, gave her cash to pay for an abortion, but when she arrived at a clinic, she was overcome with emotion and left. The woman said Walker was upset she did not go through with procedure and, the next day, drove her to a clinic and waited outside until it was done. An apologetic note from Walker followed, according to Allred, but he immediately distanced himself from her.
“In retrospect, I was naïve, and Herschel took advantage of me,” the woman said. “He took advantage of my love for him, and he made false promises to me, always giving me the impression he was on the cusp of leaving his wife but never following through.”
The woman said she came forward less than two weeks before Election Day because Walker has “publicly taken the position that he is ‘about life’ and against abortion under any circumstances when, in fact, he pressured me to have an abortion.” She said her decision was not influenced by her political leanings because she is a registered independent who voted twice for Donald Trump.
Allred, who has represented other clients who accused politicians such as Trump and Herman Cain of wrongdoing, provided what she said was evidence of the woman’s relationship with Walker. Cards signed “H” and an answering-machine message from 1992, in which Walker allegedly tells the woman he loves her, were presented to reporters. Allred also produced a receipt for the woman’s hotel stay in Minnesota in August 1990, while he was in training camp for the Vikings, as well as a photograph of Walker sprawled on a bed that Allred said was in the woman’s hotel room.
Unlike the first accuser, Allred and her client provided no specific evidence of the abortion or his facilitation of it. When asked if there was a receipt from the clinic, Allred said, “We are not going to address other exhibits we have or don’t have.”
In a statement made during a campaign stop in Georgia, Walker called the allegation “foolishness,” and Allred shot back that it was not a denial.
The new allegation against Walker comes three weeks after the Daily Beast upended the crucial Senate race with a report that he had paid a former girlfriend to have an abortion in 2009, sending her a check for $700 and a signed “get well” card. (Walker denies this.) Days later, the same woman said that he again pressured her to have an abortion in 2011 but that she declined and gave birth to the child, who is now 10. “As a father, he’s done nothing,” the woman told the New York Times. “He does exactly what the courts say, and that’s it.” Walker originally said for over a day that he didn’t know the identity of the woman accusing him — even though the Daily Beast published texts that Walker’s wife, Julie Blanchard, had sent to the woman regarding the procedure. He later acknowledged he knew her but claimed she was lying.
