*(CNN) — A woman who claims she was in a years-long romantic relationship with Herschel Walker says the Republican Senate nominee for Georgia pressured her into having an abortion in 1993, she announced at a press conference on Wednesday.
The woman, referred to as Jane Doe to protect her identity, attended the press conference virtually with her lawyer, Gloria Allred, and read her statement. Her voice was heard, but her face was not shown.
Doe said she decided to tell her story now to highlight what she said is Walker’s hypocrisy. “He has publicly taken the position that he is about life and against abortion under any circumstance when in fact he pressured me to have an abortion and personally ensured that it occurred by driving me to the clinic and paying for it,” said Doe.
At a campaign event in Georgia prior to the press conference, Walker called the allegation a “lie.”
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“I already told people this is a lie, and I’m not going to entertain, continue to carry a lie along. And I also want to let you know that I didn’t kill JFK either,” Walker said, adding that Democrats are doing and saying whatever they can to win the Senate seat.
CNN has reached out to Walker’s campaign for additional comment.
“Herschel Walker is a hypocrite, and he is not fit to be a US Senator,” said Doe. “We don’t need people in the US senate who profess one thing and do another. Herschel Walker says he is against women having abortions, but he pressured me to have one,” she said.
Doe said her romantic relationship began in 1987 when Walker was playing for the Dallas Cowboys. She said she traveled to see him as he was traded to Minnesota Vikings, and the Philadelphia Eagles. He was married throughout their relationship, she said. Allred exhibited several personal cards she said Walker sent to Doe signed with the letter “H,” to refute Walker’s claims that he never signed anything that way.
In April 1993, Doe said she became pregnant with Walker’s child. “After discussing the pregnancy with Herschel several times, he encouraged me to have an abortion and gave me the money to do so. I went to a clinic in Dallas but simply couldn’t go through with it, I left the clinic in tears,” she recounted. She lost her nerve and said Walker was upset.
He “drove me to the clinic the following day and waited for hours in the parking lot until I came out,” she said. “I was devastated because I felt like I was pressured into having the abortion,” said Doe.
Doe said her motives are not political and she says she is a registered Independent and voted for former President Donald Trump. “I do not believe that Herschel is morally fit to be a US senator and that is the reason why I am speaking up and providing proof,” she said.
The latest claims come at a pivotal moment in a race critical to both parties’ hopes of winning a majority in a Senate now divided, 50-50. Most polling shows Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who’s running for a full six-year term, with a modest lead over Walker with less than two weeks now until Election Day and early voting in Georgia into its second week.
The allegations add a new layer to the existing controversy around Walker, who has repeatedly advocated for a national ban on abortions with no exceptions.
Walker has already been accused by a former girlfriend of encouraging her to have the procedure and then reimbursing her the cost.
Walker has denounced the woman’s claim as a “flat-out lie,” but presented with a copy of the check the first woman said was a payment for her abortion, conceded it was his signature on the paper, although he said he did not know what the check was for.
The same woman also alleged that Walker sought for her to have a second abortion years later, according to The New York Times.
She said she refused and is now the mother of a son who, she says, rarely sees his father. CNN has not independently confirmed the first woman’s allegations. She has remained anonymous in public reports.
Democrats have been mostly quiet on the controversy, following cues from Warnock. The incumbent has been careful not to directly comment on the story — either in his own remarks and during their lone debate — or be seen as criticizing Walker over the specifics, though he has, in broader terms, often said that the Republican “has a problem with the truth.”
And in a sign of the race’s stakes and increasing tension, Warnock’s campaign more recently rolled out an ad, titled “Hypocrite,” that begins with a narrator saying, “For you, Herschel Walker wants to ban abortion,” before cutting to soundbites from Walker and, eventually, a newscaster describing the allegations from the first woman to accuse him of paying for her to get an abortion.
Asked about the allegations during that debate, on October 14, Walker again denied them and even suggested, without evidence, that his political rivals were conspiring against him.
“I said that is a lie and I am not backing down,” Walker said. “And we have Sen. Warnock, people that would do anything and say anything for this seat. But I am not going to back down.”
Top Republicans, meanwhile, have closed ranks around Walker. At the height of the controversy, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, chair of the party’s Senate campaign arm, and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, a nationally known conservative, traveled to Georgia and joined Walker on the campaign trail.
This story has been updated with additional information.
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