Actor Angelina Jolie welled up while addressing the US Congress on Wednesday as she urged members to pass the Violence Against Women Reauthorisation Act.

Axar.az reports that a bipartisan group of US senators introduced a proposal on Wednesday to reauthorise the 1990s-era law that extends protections for victims of domestic and sexual violence. It had lapsed in 2019 because of Republican opposition. The bill to renew the Act was announced by Senator Dick Durbin. He was joined by Democratic and Republican colleagues, domestic violence survivors and Jolie.

“Standing here at the centre of our nation’s power, I can think only of everyone who’s been made to feel powerless by their abusers, by a system that failed to protect them,” the actor said. “Parents whose children have been murdered by an abusive partner, women who suffer domestic violence yet are not believed, children who have suffered life-altering trauma and post-traumatic stress at the hands of people closest to them.”