Pray For Me
So today one of my favorite bands, Within Temptation, has released an album. It’s called Bleed Out and the media is calling it their most political album ever, and one of the songs is entitled Don’t Pray For Me which was written in reponse to some abortion restrictions passed in Poland.
The lead singer, Sharon Den Adel, wrote a short essay for the music magazine Kerrang! back in 2021, which is about how important abortion access (supposedly) is, and was written for International Women’s Day. I have decided to write a short post to respond to some of the points in that essay.
Before I get to that, I have to admit that her essay is not what you’d expect of someone pro-abortion, as it’s not hateful or angry, and she presents her arguments in a fairly reasonable way. That being said, I think she’s wrong and here’s why.
First, you can read the essay here.
Sharon den Adel: “It is the right of every woman to be able to decide…
Within Temptation’s Sharon den Adel dissects Europe’s differing abortion laws and why it is a woman’s right to choose.
“For instance, in Belgium and Hungary it is stated in the law that whoever requests an abortion needs to consult a psychologist first. In several countries there is a mandatory reflection period of several days between the first appointment and abortion.”
I am always surprised that any given European nation has any restrictions on abortion at all, especially western European countries. I don’t see why this is a problem. One thing pro-abortion people never acknowledge is that yes, some women can come to deeply regret their abortions, even if they’re pro-choice. This is a decision that should not be taken lightly, so yes, if you’re going to get one, you should be deemed mentally sound, as getting one when you’re not can make things worse. Britney Spears’s memoir is going to be released October 24 and it has been excerpted, and in that excerpt she talks about the abortion she had when she was dating Justin Timberlake, and how it had a very bad effect on her:
Britney Spears Calls Abortion ‘Most Agonizing’ Experience
‘To this day, it’s one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life,’ Spears said of the abortion she was pressured into.
Pro-abortionists hate the idea of a woman being required to speak to a psychologist or having a period of reflection before getting one. That regret is real and should be acknowledged.
“Also, there’s a large number of doctors who refuse to assist in legal abortions and don’t always redirect women to someone that would help – which could end up in women being too late to have an abortion.”
So? If a woman has bodily autonomy and the right to her own body, than so does a doctor. If a doctor does not wish to perform this procedure (and I don’t blame them), they shouldn’t have to. Now as for the other part, redirecting women to someone that is willing to perform an abortion, I don’t really believe a doctor should be obligated to if they don’t want to. Again, choices – doctors can make them too. If it’s too late for a woman to murder her child, too bad.
“Looking at what we can do better as a society to minimise the number of abortions, we need to make birth control better, easily accessible – and if possible, even free of charge – and to provide far more extensive education.”
I agree with this – I know that as a Catholic I am supposed to be against contraception but I see it as the lesser of two evils, and would prefer a pregnancy be outright prevented rather than terminted, since the termination of pregnancy results in the death of an innocent human being. So yes, I think it should be available over the counter at least, and if it is offered for free, it should be financed by private organizations, not the government. That being said, as a taxpayer I’d be willing to pay for it if abortions were outlawed.
I disagree with the notion that far more extensive education is needed – at this point, I don’t think ignorance is the problem. Lack of self-control is the problem, and I don’t know how “more education” will help people control their sexual urges.
“In my opinion, it is the ultimate right of every woman to be able to decide independently in all matters related to reproduction, including abortion.”
I would agree with this, if abortion didn’t involve the killing of another human being. That is the crux of the issue and that’s the foundation of my stance on abortion – it ends the life of an innocent human being, and that’s wrong. A woman’s right ends when it interfere’s with another’s basic right, which is the right to live.
“And in the end, isn’t it key that every newborn deserves to be loved?”
You act like adoption isn’t even an option. And who is to say that an “unloved” newborn doen’t deserve to live? How do you even know that newborn wouldn’t be loved? Maybe the newborn’s biological parents might not love them, but the child could be given up for adoption and placed into a home that would love them. Or the biological mother might every well end up loving her child.
That was the last line of this essay. It was really short.
I wrote this because when the track Don’t Pray For Me was released, I knew it was going to be about abortion and I was right, and also very disappointed. It’s also clearly based on the notion that only Christians oppose abortion and that Christians only oppose abortion because their dumb sky daddy said so. I don’t need to cite the Bible to make the case against abortion. Whether you’re Christian or not, religious or not, it’s a scientific fact that terminating a pregnancy results in the death of the fetus, of which is a human being. We all believe that killing an innocent human being is wrong, whether one is religious or not.
Another magazine did a feature on the band – this one is about Bleed Out, their recent release, and how political the album is. They don’t just sing about abortion, but about the Ukraine war and the arrest of women in Iran who refuse to wear the hijab, so it’s not tediously “woke” but there some comments that I just have to respond to:
“It’s a record about the unbreakable desire of humans to live free from tyranny and oppression,” agrees Sharon.
What about a person’s right to live? Just to simply live? A woman getting an abortion is denying someone else the right to live, yet you support that. Rather hypocritical.
She goes on to say the following:
“How many also are willing to give so much to achieve this not only for themselves, but for others and future generations. As an artist you have this platform, and we can talk about bubblegum. But I can also talk about things that matter.”
The problem with that is that the entertainment industry, across the board, is overwhelmingly leftist and that there aren’t many artists singing about how abortion is bad, or how China’s social credit system is tyrannical, or how climate change is a scam designed to get people to give up their civil liberties in order to “save the planet.” That’s why so many people complain about movies, TV and music being so political because it’s largely one-sided, and guess what? Not everybody thinks like you.
Furthermore, a great deal of these artists aren’t even intelligent in what they say. A lot of the times all they have are insults and caricatures – they never have anything nuanced or thoughtful to say about politics, and that also turns people off.
“What annoys me a lot is that people say, ‘Don’t talk about politics’,” adds Robert. “It’s not even politics. It’s your opinion as an artist. Artists have opinions. That’s what art is for. That’s what makes it interesting.”
Oh really? So I guess you support Jason Aldean’s “Try That In A Small Town” then, right? Or the movie Sound of Freedom (which I’ve seen and wrote a post about but haven’t published it yet)? And are you okay with someone being against abortion, or are you just going to call me a misogynist who wants to control women’s bodies?
Society’s political discourse has gotten so rotten because the left has overwhelming institutional power and is very tyrannical with it. A registered Republican can’t have an acting career in Hollywood because no major studio production would cast them and no reputable agent would represent them. The Screen Actors Guild might not even let them be a member and if you aren’t a member of SAG then you don’t get cast in much of anything.
Or why is it that all five of the major publishers in the US wouldn’t publish anything I’ve written not because I’m a rotten writer but because I am not a card carrying Democrat?
It’s not just a matter of people not wanting politics in their entertainment – it’s the fact that whatever it is being used to push those politics is poorly made and comes across as blunt propaganda. I don’t know if that’s true of Bleed Out because I haven’t listened to it yet, but it’s true of a lot of movies, TV shows and music these days. Even the promotion of a given movie or whatever isn’t safe from the left’s bullshit propaganda as you’ve got directors, writers and actors insulting anyone to the left of Joseph Stalin if they dare to downvote a trailer on YouTube or express their disdain for a movie on Rotten Tomatoes. Or like you’ve got the shithead director of Terminator: Dark Fate claiming that men were going to be soooo afraid of the half-android/enhanced human whatever that travels back in time to save John Connor’s woke, POC replacement. Yeah, nobody’s afraid of that skinny chick. Movie hadn’t even come out yet and he knew that nobody was going to like it, and it turned out that people were pissed off at John Connor being killed in the first few minutes of the movie, ruining the return of Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor.
Leftists are assholes when it comes to expressing their opinions, and that’s what people are angry about; not that you have an opinion at all.
So if you’re a Jew or a Muslim and you want to pray for me, please do. I don’t have a problem with it. I can use all the help I can get. Prayer isn’t meant to be a weapon or a tool of control. It’s just the way some religious people express their concern and care for you. The notion that being prayed for is somehow bad is what offends me about that song most of all, hence the title of this post. Plus, who are you to control what other people pray for?
Photo by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash