Pro-lifers have criticised Michelle Williams for using her Golden Globes speech to promote abortion. 

Williams, who is pregnant, won Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series or TV Movie for her role on "Fosse/Verdon".

Despite Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais imploring winners not to use their acceptance speeches to make political statements, Williams told the audience of Hollywood elite that she wouldn't have been able to achieve everything she did "without employing a woman's right to choose".

She said she was "grateful to have lived at a moment in our society when choice exists, because as women and as girls, things can happen to our bodies that are not our choice."

"I've tried my very best to live a life of my own making and not just a series of events that happened to me, but one that I could stand back and look at and recognize my handwriting all over it — sometimes messy and scrawling, sometimes careful and precise, but one that I have carved with my own hand," she said.

"I wouldn't have been able to do this without employing a woman's right to choose." 

She suggested that women use their vote to defend abortion rights.

"I know my choices might look different but thank God or whomever you pray to that we live in a country founded on the principle that I am free to live by my faith and you are free to live by yours," Williams said.

"So women, 18 to 118, when it is time to vote, please do so in your own self-interest; it's what men have been doing for years." 

Her speech caused media commentators and social media users to speculate whether Williams herself had undergone an abortion in the past.  Asked by a reporter later if she had personal experience of "employing a woman's right to choose", she refused to expand on her earlier comments. 

Former Planned Parenthood director and now pro-life advocate Abby Johnson called Williams' speech "sad".

"Michelle Williams wants you believe that you have to kill your children in order to be successful," she wrote on Twitter.

"Well, I have eight children and have met all of my educational and career goals. To say that we must choose is an insult to the strength of women and motherhood."

She added: "How sad it must be to trade an innocent human life for a tiny golden statue. Praying for Michelle Williams." 

Lila Rose, anti-abortion activist and founder of Live Action, tweeted. "No trophy is worth more than a child's life. Sacrificing our children to pursue our dreams is the total antithesis of women's empowerment."

She said later, "Babies do not keep us from our dreams. Babies make us better, more loving, more giving. They are the source and inspiration for our best dreams. So grateful that I've been privileged with the precious gift of being a mother."