Seven Songs That #ShoutYourAbortion

Unless you live in an Internet-free abandoned turtle shell on the shore of the Cumberland, it's likely the #ShoutYourAbortion hashtag has scrolled past your eyes at least once or twice over the past few days. The social media trend was started by Amelia Bonow (pictured over there on the left at the #ShoutYourAbortion button-making party in Seattle earlier this week) and (my former co-worker at The Stranger) Lindy West, two brave and badass women in Seattle who are changing the way our society talks about abortion.

For far too long abortion has been taboo; just saying the word out loud can cause some to physically recoil (which happened in the office earlier today when I told a co-worker I'm listening to songs about abortion, in fact). West put it best in her Guardian column: 

The fact that even progressive, outspoken, pro-choice feminists feel the pressure to keep our abortions under wraps — to speak about them only in corners, in murmurs, in private with our closest confidantes — means that opponents of abortion get to define it however suits them best. They can cast those of us who have had abortions as callous monstrosities, and seed fear in anyone who might need one by insisting that the procedure is always traumatic, always painful, always an impossible decision. Well, we’re not, and it’s not. 

Inspired by West and Bonow, who have both written unapologetically about their own abortions (read West's story here and Bonow's story here), thousands of women have used the #ShoutYourAbortion hashtag to share their experiences and, in many cases, declare that they won't be bullied or shamed into feeling bad about their decision. I can’t help but wonder if the Amendment 1 vote earlier this year would’ve gone differently if this discussion had started sooner, if voters saw just how many women have actually benefited from exercising their right to choose.

With abortion on the brain, I started to think about all the abortion-related songs I know (and thankfully there’s a fairly useful list on Wikipedia, too) and it didn't take long to realize just how many of them focus on the darker side — the negative ways abortion and/or the shame that society has manufactured around having an abortion can affect the woman's mental and physical health. In Heavens to Betsy's "Baby's Gone," the pre-Sleater-Kinney band sings about a young woman who died attempting to give herself an abortion ("I'd be a little girl forever / I won't make you ashamed / Little girl's gone away because I died on a knitting needle yesterday"). In "Autobiography," Nicki Minaj confesses that she still dreams about the baby she never had and regrets listening to all the people who told her she wasn't ready to be a mother.

These songs, as great as many of them are, just further prove how #ShoutYourAbortion is so necessary — until now, there was no wide-spread support system in place for women who felt comfortable about their decision. Where are the songs about how abortion has saved women's lives? Where are the songs about the relief a woman can feel knowing she’s making the most responsible decision for her own body and her own future? Here's hoping this movement inspires a new crop of music makers to take the mic and get people dancing. Because "I died on a knitting needle yesterday" might be the most depressing, upsetting line ever recorded and we, as a society, have come too far to keep pretending choosing to not be a mother only comes with horrific, life-ruining results.

Heavens to Betsy, "Baby's Gone"

Hole, "Mrs. Jones"

Nicki Minaj, "Autobiography"

Fleetwood Mac, "Sara"

Cat Power, "Nude as the News"

Lunachicks, "Fallopian Rhapsody"

PJ Harvey, "When Under Ether"