Lena Dunham has caused controversy with her latest comments saying she 'wishes' she had an abortion

Lena Dunham has found herself in hot water again, after her recent comments saying she 'wishes' she had an abortion.

The creator and star of HBO's Girls made the controversial statement on last week's episode of her podcast, Women of the Hour.

The theme of the episode was women's reproductive rights, so Dunham shared an anecdote about visiting a Planned Parenthood in Texas a few years ago.

At the center, she was approached by a girl who asked her if she wanted to take part in a project where women share their stories about abortion.

Dunham's reaction to the question, she says, has caused her to feel shame ever since.

'I sort of jumped. "I haven't had an abortion," I told her. I wanted to make it really clear to her that as much as I was going out and fighting for other women's options, I myself had never had an abortion.

'And I realized then that even I was carrying within myself stigma around this issue. Even I, the woman who cares as much as anybody about a woman's right to choose, felt it was important that people know that I was unblemished in this department,' Dunham recalls.

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That exchange has led her to change the way she views the 'stigma around abortion'.

'So many people I love - my mother, my best friends - have had to have abortions for all kinds of reasons. I feel so proud of them for their bravery, for their self-knowledge, and it was a really important moment for me then that I had internalized some of what society had thrown at us and I had to put it in the garbage.

'Now I can say I still haven't had an abortion, but I wish I had,' Dunham said.

It was Dunham's final words - 'but I wish I had' - that had so many up in arms online.

Twitter users were quick to criticize Dunham for trivializing the very serious procedures

One Twitter user with the username Jazmyne, who said she had an abortion earlier this year, said it was a procedure 'you don't want to experience' and felt that Dunham's comments were 'sickening'.

'You can be a feminist and support/volunteer/donate to Planned Parenthood and NOT 'WISH' to be in the shoes of many of these women!' the Twitter user wrote.

Even self-described liberals took issue with Dunham's comments.

'Finally something both liberals and conservatives can agree on. We're all sick of Lena Dunham,' Nick Jack Pappas wrote.