Why Jennifer Lawrence Is Endorsing Kamala Harris and Producing 2 Women's Rights Docs: 'Women Are Dying' (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

(Left-right:) Jennifer Lawrence on May 11; portrait of Kamala Harris in 2021.Photo:IanDagnall Computing / Alamy; Jamie McCarthy/Getty

IanDagnall Computing / Alamy; Jamie McCarthy/Getty

Jennifer Lawrenceis backingKamala Harrisin the 2024 presidential race. The main reason, she tells PEOPLE, is simple: “Abortion is literally on the ballot.”

“I’m voting for Kamala Harris because I think she’s an amazing candidate and I know that she will do whatever she can to protect reproductive rights,” says the Oscar-winning actress, 34, urging others to do the same. “That’s the most important thing, is to not let somebody into the White House who is going to ban abortion.”

Ahead of the national election, the self-describedfeministis executive producing two to-be-released documentary films that exemplify those political values:Bread and Roses, which follows three women livingunder Taliban rulein Afghanistan, andZurawski v Texas, about abortion care supporters who in 2023sued the state of Texas.

“As online trolls like to point out every time I get involved in politics, I didn’t go to school, I dropped out of middle school, so I don’t have a classic education,” says Lawrence with characteristic candor. “So storytelling is where I get most of my education.”

Kamala Harris on May 1.Joe Raedle/Getty

Joe Raedle/Getty

Producing and promoting films through her production company Excellent Cadaver is her way of educating others through storytelling, she adds. “That’s the beautiful, amazing thing about film and documentaries. Hearing facts or listening to the news, hearing certain things happen, it’s very easy to forget until you actually see human existence and you see what’s going on. I think that’s when minds can be changed.”

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Bread and Roses, from Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani, also counts Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize laureateMalala Yousafzaiamong its executive producers. “I read Malala’sbookyears ago, so actually meeting her is a huge honor,” says Lawrence. “And she’s unsurprisingly brilliant."

The Afghan women living under theTaliban’s restrictive decreesdepicted in the documentary — a government employee confined to her home, an activist taking refuge in Pakistan and a dentist organizing demonstrations — taught theNo Hard Feelingsstar “what heroism really is,” she tells PEOPLE.

(Left-right:) Sahra Mani, Jennifer Lawrence and Justine Ciarrocchi at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023.Pascal Le Segretain/Getty

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty

Working with Mani throughout the complicated process of getting equipment to the doc’s subjects, she adds, it was inspiring to “seeing these women find community in each other and finding what makes them able to go about their day and to band together and to fight, but then still finding time for levity and love.”

The women depicted inZurawski v Texas, “who have gone through what no human being should ever, ever endure,” Lawrence says, similarly represent the human side of political oppression: “They put it on display so that it doesn’t happen to other women. They’re not thinking about their suffering. They’re using their suffering to help other people, and it’s heroic.”

The case ofZurawski v. Texas, which the state’s Supreme Courtruled againstthis May, began when Amanda Zurawskinearly lost her lifeas doctors were legally banned from removing her unviable fetus in 2022.

Jennifer Lawrence at the Academy Awards March 10.John Shearer/WireImage

John Shearer/WireImage

source: people.com