Singer Lily Allen responds to ‘sea of hateful comments’ after making light of multiple abortions

Singer Lily Allen has responded to criticism she received after announcing on a recent podcast that she’s had more abortions than she can remember.

Key Takeaways:

• Lily Allen said hearing the criticism she and podcast co-host Miquita Oliver received after joking about not recalling how many abortions they’ve had was ‘hard.’

• She said she is a ‘good person’ and that those who criticized their casual attitude toward abortion only wanted to shame them.

• Allen claimed that legalized abortion is about women ‘wanting to have control.’

• Allen has had two living children following her abortions, and has said that her children ‘ruined’ her career.

The Details:

Allen and her “Miss Me?” podcast co-host Miquita Oliver received backlash after sharing that they have both had four or five abortions, but can’t remember the exact number. Social media users and media outlets criticized them, causing the duo to describe the days following the podcast as “hard.”

One commenter said, “This conversation is just disturbing on so many levels. May God help you two in the end.”

Others called it “horrible,” “morally bankrupt,” and a “trauma laugh response” to abortion.

Another said, “I find this conversation incredibly insensitive. I’m very much pro-choice, but I’m genuinely shocked by what was said.” She pointed to the pain of so many women who are unable to have a child and desperately want to.

Hitting back at the critics

Allen responded to the backlash, saying, “With the comments we’ve had in the wake of these abortion comments, it’s not really about the thing. Lots of people have abortions, so it’s not really [abortions] that people are sensationalizing; it’s about the audacity of expressing it.”

She also said, “There are times I sit there and I think: ‘Oh f***, life would be so much easier if I just sort of played the game and was a good little girl that said the rights and didn’t piss people off. And it’s hard, you know? It’s really difficult swimming upstream in a f***ing sea of hateful comments, it’s really stifling.”

But she continued to argue that she is fine with having had so many abortions and added that she shouldn’t be made to feel bad about it. She said:

And being a woman, it’s like: ‘How dare you find humor in these things — you’re meant to be ashamed and scared, and if you don’t feel ashamed and scared we’re going to do everything that we can to push you back there. And guess what?  It works.

I read a lot of that stuff last week, and when I was young, and I thought: ‘F***, I’m a bad person.’ But no, I’m actually a good person. People that are my friends and family know that I’m a good person.

All people — even those who think of themselves as “good” — are capable of doing wrong or immoral things. And it’s not humorous to end the life of your own innocent child. Attempting to “find humor” in something so dark is a giant, flashing neon sign from your conscience telling you something you likely don’t want to hear.

Lessening the guilt

She went on to say that “for every horrible comment” she and Oliver received, “countless women” have messaged them saying that their admittance had “alleviated them of their guilt and their shame.”

Because if you feel bad for having had one or two abortions, it might lessen your guilt if you heard women speaking about having had four or five abortions. It’s the ‘at least I’m not as bad as them’ mentality. That doesn’t make abortion right, it just makes women more comfortable doing it.

Oliver joked, “And if you wanted to have a baby with some of the f***ing a**holes I didn’t want to have a baby with, that’s fine. That’s up to you; but I didn’t want to have a baby with them and start a family with them, and I made that choice for myself.”

In reality, Oliver made the choice to end the lives of babies she’d already created with these men. It’s just unfortunate that Oliver didn’t end the relationships prior to becoming pregnant — or becoming sexually involved in the first place.

Allen, who now has two daughters, admitted, “It’s about control. It’s wanting to have control over our minds and our way of thinking, and the way that we feel and relate to ourselves.”

This kind of control, however, is oppressive and abusive. The ‘choice’ to have sex and then have abortions costs innocent people their lives.

The Back Story:

Recently, Allen and Oliver spoke about their previous abortions on their podcast with both admitting that they can’t quite recall how many abortions they have had. Allen laughed, “I can’t remember, I think maybe, like… I want to say four or five.” She added, “I remember once getting pregnant and the man paying for my abortion and me thinking it was so romantic. I’ll tell you how romantic it was, I don’t think he texted me after!”

Oliver said she’s had “about five” abortions.

The comments received heavy criticism.

Allen, who has two born children, said last year that her children ruined her career. “I never really had a strategy when it comes to career, but yes, my children ruined my career,” she said. “I love them and they complete me, but in terms of pop-stardom, they totally ruined it.”

Why It Matters:

Allen and Oliver are trying to normalize the killing of innocent preborn children through abortion and alleviate the natural negative feelings that women have about their abortions.

Laughing about abortion is a way of coping with the trauma they may have endured — and doing so publicly may convince other women that multiple abortions are of little consequence.

And yet, it is very telling that so many who heard their remarks were completely repulsed by such casualness in killing.

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