Earlier this month, Zara Larsson replied to a fan TikTok video of her performing, which was overlaid with the text: “I didn’t know I was pregnant here, but at least my baby got to hear midnight sun before I aborted it.” In the comments, Zara wrote, “I killed the performance, and then you killed it after the performance purrrrrr.”
Following the tongue-in-cheek comment, the singer posted videos explaining her stance and the subsequent backlash she’s received, “Lately with the abortion joke, which was very funny by the way, I lost a three million dollar deal, and I was like okay, wtf.”
“If you don’t agree with my thinking that women should have access to abortion or that we could have a joking conversation about it, we are just not meant to be partners,” she continued.
“And I don’t give a f**k about it. You can give me a million DMs, you can send me a million comments about ‘boo, boo, boo, you are a bad person, you wicked witch’. I don’t give a rat's ass because I am so sure of my stance in that.”
Zara elaborated on her view, saying, “I am so pro-choice. I am as pro-choice as the next person, but abortion is a very serious topic, and I just want to know why that is. Why do you feel like abortion is only okay when it’s a very hard decision, when it’s something that women have to struggle with going through, when it’s emotionally or physically painful? Why is it only morally OK when women have to suffer? Now riddle me that.” Addressing how taboo the topic still is, she argued that “I feel like by joking about stuff like that, which is a 'serious topic', it also makes it something that we can just talk about. It doesn’t have to be taboo. It doesn’t have to be this bad thing that women do.”
The House of Lords has voted in favour of decriminalising abortion.
The backlash Zara has faced is typical of this topic and is demonstrative of how great a culture shift there still needs to be in society to create a safe environment for people who get abortions. Whilst our reproductive rights are precarious and unequal across the globe, with feminist networks fighting to protect and enshrine them, the stigma and social environment around them also remain similarly precarious. We have a long way to go legally, but also culturally.
Even in countries where our abortion laws are progressing – like my home in the UK, which just last week the House of Lords voted to uphold decriminalisation of abortion and secure historic pardons for women – the social stigma remains rife. Abortion is still seen as a bad, dirty word.
Whilst, of course, abortions can be a sensitive topic for some people who have had them, for many, as Zara notes, they are not always a hard decision. Ultimately, people who can have abortions are allowed to joke about them, if they so wish. The singer was not “punching down” with her joke. Her fan joked about having an abortion, and Zara joked along with the fan. What is controversial about that?
Zara hit on an important feminist topic, which is that pro-choice is not pro-choice if it comes with a list of exceptions; it is not autonomy if only certain women having a certain kind of abortion are granted it. Abortion must be made accessible, safe and socially acceptable, not just legal, to offer real protection.
Making abortions more socially acceptable also comes with making them less “moralistic” and fraught; they can be an easy decision to make, they can be boring, they can be void of any big struggle. But those aren’t the abortions patriarchal society wants us to have. It wants women, broadly, to suffer. It’s why people feel much more comfortable with the idea of “allowing” abortions if the person has been raped, but not so accepting when a person simply doesn’t want to have a child. Women’s distress is more socially acceptable than our autonomy – and until that shifts, we will not see equality.
Abortions = healthcare.
