Vocalist Florence Welch on pregnancy loss and music industry's failure to support mothers

Florence Welch, lead vocalist of Florence + the Machine, recently shared that in August 2023, She suffered an ectopic pregnancy and a ruptured fallopian tube while performing on stage, causing significant internal bleeding. She said she had long struggled with whether or not she could have a child and hold a career at the same time, before deciding to try for a baby at age 37.

Then, just weeks into the pregnancy, she lost the baby and her fallopian tube.

Key Takeaways:

• After years of debating whether or not to have children out of fear she would have to walk away from her career, Florence + the Machine vocalist, Florence Welch, decided to try for a baby at age 37.

• She quickly became pregnant, but suffered a miscarriage early on — an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured her fallopian tube and sent her into emergency surgery in 2023.

The Details:

In an interview with The Guardian about her new record, "Everybody Scream," Welch shared the experience of having an ectopic pregnancy, as well as her thoughts on having children as a woman with a career in the music industry.

It was two years ago that she and her unnamed on-and-off boyfriend decided to have a baby. Welch wasn't sure how quickly she would become pregnant because she was 37 at the time, but she had a positive pregnancy test right away.

"It was a big shock," she said. "But it felt magical, as well. I felt I had followed a bodily instinct, in that animal sense, and it had happened." But early into the pregnancy, she tragically had a miscarriage.

"I think, because it was my first time being pregnant, and it was my first miscarriage, I was like, OK, I've heard this is part of it. I spoke to my doctor, and they are not generally dangerous. Devastating, but not dangerous." She was scheduled to perform a week later and decided to continue with that plan. "Emotionally, I was sad and scared, but I think, also, I was coping," she said.

'Why did this happen to me?'

On the day of the show, however, she began heavily bleeding and was in a significant amount of pain. Pale and feeling ill, she said she did as women do and powered through. Her doctor, however, advised her to get checked out. The next day, back in London, she felt fine and admitted she only went for an ultrasound because her doctor insisted on it.

"I didn't want to go for the scan," she said. "I thought, I've done this show, I'm fine, I can cope. But my doctor's insistence that I come in saved my life."

The scan revealed that her fallopian tube had ruptured and she "had a Coke can's worth of blood" in her abdomen. She had to undergo emergency surgery, and the fallopian tube could not be saved.

"I tried to run away," she said with tears. "... It was animal instinct. Like, run. But there was an [ultrasound wand] inside me and a woman I'd never met before, and I was like, gotta go! If I'd got on that plane, I'd have come off on a stretcher or worse."

After she was home, the weight of the loss seemed to hit her. She said, "I think the sound that came out of me was like a wounded animal or something. And then, that was that." Working helped her to overcome her sadness, but she was also angry because she felt "unsupported" by the music industry.

[I]t wasn't built for me," she said, noting:

"[T]here was this sadness of, 'why did that happen to me?' Why do I have this record, if I didn't get to have a kid?"

Career and children

It's clear that the decision of whether or not to have a baby has been on Welch's mind for years.

In 2022, she released a single called "King," which was a conversation with herself about whether or not to have a child. In it, she wrote:

We argue in the kitchen about whether to have children...

I am no mother, I am no bride, I am king.

... But a woman is a changeling, always shifting shape, just when you think you have it figured out something new begins to take.

What strange claws are these scratching at my skin, I never knew my killer would be coming from within.

The line about her killer within took on new meaning in 2023 when her ectopic pregnancy threatened her life. "Having that line in 'King' was a strange thing," she said.

Welch also noted that many of the men she knows in the music industry have children and continue to tour "because they have a partner with the kids at home."

Women often sacrifice their fertility and motherhood to focus on their careers, sometimes until it's too late. No one expects the same of men.

"What I'm sacrificing to keep going is more apparent, and bigger, as you get older. I will get those things, hopefully," said Welch. "I will get to have a family, but I haven't had both. Or so far I haven't, and then when I tried, I was sort of violently rebuffed."

Why It Matters:

It's a statement made by women regardless of the industry in which they work. Very often, women are expected to put children and family on the back burner for their careers, while men are not. Women are sometimes left feeling as Welch does — forced to choose one or the other. This societal outlook has contributed to the massive number of abortions plaguing the United States and even around the world.

Welch's fears about having a child and maintaining her career are not unfounded.

Today, many corporations have vowed to pay abortion-related costs for their female employees. Rather than the 'benefit' it is promoted to be, it's really a way for these corporations to avoid paying for maternity leave and increased health care costs. It's far cheaper to pay for an employee to have an abortion and then get her back to work instead of paying her while she takes time away to be with her baby.

Live Action's Pro-Choice Bosses video examined how corporations have been bragging about their abortion "benefits" for female employees. And viewers responded to the satire video with heartbreaking stories. One woman said that when she learned she was pregnant, "my female manager even offered to take me to Planned Parenthood so that I could get an abortion and she got upset with me when I told her I wasn’t going to kill my baby.”

Pro-Choice Bosses - A Generous Offer To Our Pregnant Employees

A father wrote, “This is what happened to my wife. Got fired from her company 2 months after [having] the baby.”

As previously reported by Live Action News:

Companies including Amazon, Starbucks, CitiGroup, CNN, Comcast-NBC Universal, and Netflix (to name just a few) have chosen to subsidize abortion travel for employees located in pro-life states — including airfare, hotel costs, restaurants, and child care. Yet the Wall Street Journal recently reported that only 35% of companies offer paid maternity leave to their employees — and despite promoting the new 'benefit' of abortions for employees, Disney subsidiary Hulu even quietly reduced its maternity leave to just eight weeks.

In the music industry, Welch's fears are even more founded. Countless women have shared stories of pressure to abort because of their music careers.

Before her death in 2023, Sinead O'Connor revealed she was pressured to have an abortion because the record company had spent £100,000 recording her album. Her doctor, hired by the record label, told her, "You owe it to them not to have this baby."

“Furthermore," she said, "he informed me that if I flew while pregnant, my baby would be damaged. And anyway, if I was going to be a musician I ought not to have babies because a woman shouldn’t leave her baby to go on tour and at the same time a child can’t be taken on tour.”

Other women in the music and film industries have shared similar stories.

The Bottom Line:

All of this sends the message that Welch struggled to overcome and that the abortion industry has been drilling into women for years — that mothers are incapable of being successful at their careers. It's a lie that scares women out of pursuing motherhood and convinces them they need abortion to succeed.