Washington Post: Woman says she had to push Herschel Walker to pay for abortion he wanted her to have

By Paul LeBlanc, CNN

The woman who previously said she had an abortion paid for by Herschel Walker, the GOP Senate nominee in Georgia, said she had to repeatedly push him to fund the 2009 procedure that she said he wanted her to have, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

The woman told the Post that she told Walker, “You need to send — I can’t afford to pay for this.”

“We did this, too. Both of us did this. We both know how babies are made,” she told the Post of her message to Walker.

The woman told the outlet that Walker ultimately sent her a $700 check via FedEx roughly a week after the procedure. The Post said it reviewed an image of the check the woman said Walker sent her, which had his name and signature on it, as well as a receipt from a woman’s medical center in the amount of $575.

A person whom the woman confided in at the time told the Post, “She was like, ‘I’ll do it as soon as you send the check…. And he was like ‘I sent the check.’ And she was like, ‘It’s been seven days. I didn’t get it.'”

CNN has reached out to the Walker campaign for comment. In an interview with ABC on Tuesday, Walker flatly denied the woman’s allegations.

“I didn’t know who it was until last week. And I went, ‘Oh,'” he told ABC. “And I said, ‘That’s not true.’ And, but, they still ran with it, and so I said, ‘You know, that’s not true, that’s a lie.’ I called it a lie, and right now, I said I’m going to go back to campaigning and people can continue to do whatever they want with the story.”

When asked if he ever had a conversation with the woman about an abortion or gave money to pay for the procedure, Walker responded flatly, “No.”

“Yes, she’s lying,” he said.

Walker, who has opposed abortion rights on the campaign trail, has repeatedly denied reports from The Daily Beast and the New York Times that, taken together, found that the Republican reimbursed the woman with whom he was in a relationship for a 2009 abortion and then, two years later, again sought for her to have the procedure after she became pregnant.

She refused the second time and had a son, who she said is now 10 years old.

CNN has not independently confirmed the woman’s allegation about the abortion or that Walker urged her to terminate a second pregnancy.

Walker was joined by Florida Sen. Rick Scott, the chair of the party’s Senate campaign arm, and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton at a stop in Carrollton, about an hour west of Atlanta, on a statewide bus tour on Tuesday as a show of strength from national Republicans for the Trump-backed nominee in one of their most important pick-up opportunities.

Though Walker did not directly address the accusations on the trail on Tuesday, he made a number of vague references to his political opponents. “They’ll do whatever it takes, say whatever they have to say, because they want this seat right here. But I don’t think they know that they woke up a bear. Hey, I’m not just a dog now. I’m a bear. So they gotta bring more than that.”

Asked about his position on abortion in the interview with ABC on Tuesday, and pressed specifically on exceptions, he said that he supported state law in Georgia. “I believe in the Georgia heartbeat bill. You know that has exceptions in it. Because that’s from the people,” he said.

A first-time candidate for office, Walker has said he would support a national ban on abortions after 15 weeks. He said in May that he supports a ban on abortion rights and that there are “no exceptions in my mind.”

The Georgia race between Walker and Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is among the most competitive Senate contests on the 2022 midterm slate and could be instrumental in deciding control of the evenly divided chamber.

President Joe Biden told CNN’s MJ Lee on Wednesday that he believes Democrats can hang onto the Senate seat in Georgia, as the controversy surrounding Walker continues.

Asked by Lee for his reaction to Walker, Biden simply replied: “Negative.”

Walker won the GOP nomination in May despite some Republicans’ concerns over well-documented prior accusations that he threatened women. Walker has denied at least one of those allegations and has spoken publicly and written about his struggles with mental illness.

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CNN’s Shawna Mizelle and Allie Malloy contributed to this report.