….Considering the music industry’s support for abortion, it is revealing to consider how the artists and others in the industry actually portray the experience. A handful are cruel, even gleeful—in his biography, Marilyn Manson related the abortion of his child in graphic terms, describing the doctor “tearing out the brain of our child with a pair of forceps.” But most admit to feeling depression or even horror at the experience. Steven Tyler of Aerosmith described the saline abortion of his child to a friend: “It comes out dead. I was pretty devastated. In my mind I’m going … what have I done?” Even Janis Joplin admitted that she regretted her abortion and that she believed it had worsened her psychological struggles.
Trauma and regret are far more common than “Shout Your Abortion” defiance. Suzi Quatro admitted, “I couldn’t get out of my mind who that first baby would have become … Any woman who’s been through an abortion and tells you it was nothing is lying.” Sharon Osbourne concurred: “It was the worst thing I ever did … I howled my way through it, and it was horrible. I would never recommend it to anyone because it comes back to haunt you. When I tried to have children, I lost three—I think it was because something had happened to my cervix during the abortion.”
Indeed, political propaganda can deceive—but art derived from experience rarely does. Madonna, a fierce abortion activist, told Time magazine in 1996 that she regretted her abortion, even though she had believed her lifestyle to be incompatible with motherhood at the time. When she sang about a girl being pressured to kill her child in her 1986 hit “Papa Don’t Preach,” she portrayed the expectant mother pushing back: “Papa don’t preach I’m in trouble deep / Papa don’t preach, I’ve been losing sleep / But I made up my mind, I’m keeping my baby / I’m gonna keep my baby.”
Rapper Nicki Minaj confessed that she regretted her abortion and sang about the lost baby in “All Things Go”: “My child with Aaron / would’ve been sixteen any minute / So in some ways I feel like ’Caiah is the both of them / It’s like he’s ‘Caiah’s little angel, looking over him.” Singer Beth Torbert, known to her public as Bif Naked, named a song after a baby she aborted when she was 18: “I hope you can forgive me: my baby Chotee, forgive me.” Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac also named a song after the baby she and Don Henley aborted, “Sara”: “Wait a minute baby / Stay with me a while / Said you’d give me light / But you never told me about the fire.” And Sinead O’Connor imagined her lost aborted daughter in “My Special Child”:
Think about my little girl
Her yellow skin and her dark curl
And how her father’s heart was frozen
I spoke to her and I said:
“You won’t regret the mother you have chosen.”
I lied. Where’s she tonight?
One of the most chilling portrayals of abortion in song is found in “Bodies” by the Sex Pistols. John Lydon wrote the story after a mentally unstable fan allegedly showed up on his doorstop, holding an aborted baby in a plastic bag. In his autobiography, he relates that this young woman described her abortions in excruciating detail. One line in the song sums up what he heard: “Throbbing squirm, gurgling bloody mess….”
The above comes from a Sept. 1 story in First Things.
But they live their glamorous, luxurious lives all the same, whether they regret it or not.
Regrets…. I’ve had a few. with apologies to the great Sinatra.
But, without contrition and a firm amendment not to sin, it’s only more sin. Regret leads to despair.
(I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption…)
Janis Joplin donated to the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic that treated her after her botched abortion in Tijuana.
Stevie Nicks does not regret her abortion(s).
Papa Don’t Preach was about not giving the baby up for adoption.
Eddie Van Halen got his girlfriend pregnant while they were still in high school. They went to Planned Parenthood to get an abortion without telling either of their parents. After their parents found out sometime later, their parents supported their decision, but felt bad that their children were too scared to come to them and ask for help.
Are you The Little Old Lady?
Probably not. But many people still remember Eddie Van Halen back in his Pasadena years.
It is difficult to tell the point of this story but if you click the link the author writes:
what should we believe? Should it be their political sloganeering, their fat donations, their profane chants? Or should it be the truths they tell us when they sing of nightmares and pain and longing? Should we believe them when they tell us abortion is about reproductive health, or when they sing of the lost little boys and girls that still clutch at their hearts in quiet moments? When the artists speak, they tell us abortion is a fundamental right. But when they sing, they tell us that when the songs give way to silence, the yawning emptiness is large enough to swallow entire lives.
They are just songs. You are reading more into it than is there. They are pro=choice. Abortion is a painful experience but even if they regret their abortion or wonder about their dead child, they still support a woman’s right to choose.
The first article I ever read by a woman who had an abortion was by one of President Johnson’s daughters. She described how every time she saw a child that was the age that her aborted baby was, she had a sadness pierce her heart. But she said still she did not regret the abortion.
What mother who struggled to have an abortion but ended up having the child. What mother would look at her three month old infant and say “I wish I had aborted you?” The regret is only on the other side.
I hope all of these people find peace through Christ.
Jesus forgives our sins when we turn to him with a contrite heart.