A woman who said she had a yearslong romantic relationship with Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Herschel Walker said Wednesday that he urged her to have an abortion in 1993 and drove her back to the Texas clinic after she changed her mind.
The unnamed woman appeared as “Jane Doe” at a press conference with attorney Gloria Allred less than two weeks before the election against U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock. Walker called the claim “a lie,” just as he dismissed a previous accusation by an ex-girlfriend that he paid for her abortion.
Walker has called for an outright ban on abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest. Allred said she had evidence of handwritten letters between the woman and Walker, who had a “romantic and intimate relationship” for years.
At a campaign stop in Dillard, Walker said he was “done with this foolishness. I’ve already told you this is a lie, and I’m not going to entertain it.”
The former football player later told Fox News that “desperate” Democrats were trying to damage his campaign.
“This is a lie. I’ve said it once, and I’ve moved on, my campaign has moved on,” he said. “We’re worried about what the Georgia people are talking about. They’re talking about this inflation. They’re talking about crime. They’re talking about men in women sports. They’re talking about this border.”
The woman’s identity was not revealed because she said she fears reprisals. Allred provided a photo she said showed Walker on a bed in the woman’s hotel room as well as cards and letters she said he wrote her. Allred did not provide a receipt for the abortion when asked by reporters.
“Herschel Walker is a hypocrite and he is not fit to be a U.S. senator. We don’t need people in the U.S. Senate who profess one thing and do another,” the woman said. “Herschel Walker says he is against women having abortions, but he pressured me to have one.”
The woman said she was a supporter of former President Donald Trump and that her decision to come forward wasn’t politically motivated. Instead, she said she doesn’t believe Walker is “morally fit to be a U.S. senator and that is the reason why I am speaking up and providing proof.”
Credit: Greg Nash/The Hill
Credit: Greg Nash/The Hill
Allred said Walker met the woman in the 1980s while he was playing for the Dallas Cowboys and they quickly struck up a romantic relationship. She said she has signed cards from Walker, including one with a handwritten poem professing his love to the woman.
Allred played a voicemail recording Walker left for the woman in February 1992 when he was competing in the Olympics for the U.S. bobsledding team. “I want to say I love you and I am thinking about you,” he said in the recording.
In June 1992 after he was traded to the Eagles, the woman traveled with the team to games. In April 1993, Walker learned she was pregnant. She was surprised, Allred said, because she had been on birth control throughout their relationship.
“Mr. Walker clearly wanted her to have an abortion and convinced her to do so,” Allred said. She said he gave her cash and she went to a clinic in Dallas, but she decided against it.
“She became overwhelmed with emotion. She could not go through with it. And she left the clinic in tears,” Allred said.
Allred said Walker was “upset” and pressured her to return to the clinic to go through with the abortion. The following day, Walker drove her to the clinic and waited in the parking lot for hours until she emerged.
After that, Allred said, he distanced himself from the woman and later sent her a note apologizing. That note wasn’t displayed at the press conference.
She is the second woman to come forward anonymously to claim that Walker urged her to have the procedure after becoming pregnant by him. That other woman, who has declined to speak to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, told other news outlets that Walker paid for her 2009 abortion and urged her to have a second.
Polls show a tight contest between Warnock and Walker, and both campaigns are preparing for a December runoff if no candidate gets a majority of the vote in the Nov. 8 election.
In a statement, Warnock aide Rachel Petri said the allegation is the “the latest example of a troubling pattern we have seen play out again and again and again.”
“Herschel Walker shouldn’t be representing Georgians in the U.S. Senate,” she said.
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