Lily Allen's 'four or five abortions': How can we respond?

"I don’t want a f***ing baby right now."

This was pop singer Lily Allen speaking of her "four or five" abortions in a recent interview – she can’t remember exactly how many; she used to "get pregnant all the time".

It's hard to know in just what direction to take a response. Perhaps we can point out that if, for instance, some man had brandished a gun at her and told her he didn’t want her alive right now, the media would (rightly) erupt in righteous outrage about appalling violence against women. Instead, the interviewer simply enthused: "I’m so happy I can say that and you can say it and no one came to shoot us down, no judgement. We’ve had about the same amount of abortions." No one shot them down, no judgement. She’s right. They got away with it, and no one found that terrible.

Perhaps we should bewail, as Melanie McDonagh of The Spectator did, that biology education in schools must be shockingly poor if two young women can possibly think that the lives they terminated were somehow not human, or that this was no different from contraception. Not to mention the education of the legislators who have now decided that babies can be terminated right up until birth and that this is nothing more than a woman doing what she wants with her own body. The fact that it is casually killing someone else’s body just doesn’t seem to matter.

A lack of education?

A friend of mine frequently helps out with the Centre for Biological Reform UK (CBR UK), which holds public displays that show what happens in abortion. They do nothing but hand out pamphlets and talk to people who want to have a conversation. They are regularly subjected to abuse simply for standing there with educational banners. That is, public abuse is flung at people who silently advertise the factual reality of what abortion is. Just doing that is somehow seen as outrageously hateful.

It really is hard to know how to respond. The ignorance about abortion is appalling. That anyone could believe the propaganda that abortions primarily happen because helpless women are raped, is astonishing. That anyone could believe that it is a woman’s right to be able to dispose of unwanted children by killing them. That this could be widespread at any time, and especially at a time like now when knowledge and information, not to mention contraceptives, are more available than they have ever been. It just beggars belief. It beggars mine, anyway.

At least Lily Allen’s comments might start to show where abortion culture takes us. It is a horrible culture. It is chilling. It is women laughing about the death of children.

So, I don’t know what to say. I’m glad Lily Allen has two lovely children. I cannot understand the cognitive dissonance that enables her to simultaneously laugh off the fact that her other children died. By her choice.

But I’m glad it has been so widely advertised. Perhaps people will start to see what this choice really is.

CBR offers support for those seeking help after abortion: https://postabortsupport.org.uk/abortion-recovery-course/