Herschel Walker, the anti-abortion Republican candidate vying for a Senate seat in Georgia, one of the nation’s most scrutinized elections, was charged again on Wednesday with paying a woman to interrupt her pregnancy.
The former American football star is locked in a close race that could determine whether or not the Republican Party takes control of the upper house of Congress in the midterm elections next month.
Accused of domestic violence, adultery…
But his campaign has been marred by several controversies: he is accused of domestic violence, of having had children outside his marriage and of having paid to terminate the pregnancy of a former girlfriend.
Another woman on Wednesday said the former Dallas Cowboys player pressured her to have an abortion when they were having an extramarital affair several years ago. “Herschel Walker is a hypocrite and he is not fit to be a United States senator,” the woman, whose identity has not been revealed, said during a press conference organized on Zoom. “We don’t need people in the Senate who say one thing and do another,” she added, pointing out that Herschel Walker spoke out “against women who have abortions.” “But he pressured me to have” an abortion, she said.
Represented by famous lawyer Gloria Allred, the woman, who defined herself as an independent who voted twice for Republican Donald Trump in the presidential elections, assured that her approach was not motivated by political reasons.
According to her, her relationship with Walker began in November 1987 in Dallas, when he was married and playing for the Cowboys.
“He encouraged me to have an abortion and gave me money to do it”
The couple continued to see each other even after Herschel Walker switched teams and she explained that she learned in April 1993 that she was pregnant. “After discussing the pregnancy several times with Herschel, he encouraged me to have an abortion and gave me money to do so,” she told reporters.
“I went to a clinic in Dallas, but I just couldn’t make it. I left the clinic in tears. When I told Herschel what had happened, he was upset and told me he was going to come back to the clinic with me the next day to have an abortion,” she said. “I was upset because I felt like I had been pressured into having an abortion,” she continued.
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The allegations come weeks after another woman accused Herschel Walker of paying for her abortion in 2009, which the Conservative candidate denied.
Walker, whose candidacy is backed by Donald Trump, has made his anti-abortion stance a key part of his campaign against incumbent Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock.