“But I’m thinking of all the poor girls who get pregnant when they don’t want to be, and how they should have a choice instead of leaving it up to some politician or doctor who don’t have to raise the baby. “Personally, I think you should prevent unwanted pregnancy rather than get an abortion. “That’s also why I won’t ever say anything against the abortion laws they made easier a few years ago,” she wrote in the 1976 memoir. And still she kept on getting pregnant, giving birth to six children. She experienced miscarriages, nearly dying because she had no money to go to the doctor. She wrote that she couldn’t afford to stay overnight after the birth of her second child, so she went back home to wash diapers and draw water from the well 24 hours after delivery. Lynn was frank about her experiences giving birth so young, being mentally unprepared and not physically ready. “It is, in fact, not about anything other than control of women and their pleasure, or anyone who can get pregnant and their pleasure,” Collins said. Men in country music were singing about abortion, premarital sex and divorce in the ’60s and ’70s with little or no blowback, but it was rare that a woman could sing about wanting to enjoy sex with her husband without the consequences of an unplanned pregnancy, as Lynn did. It’s like a challenge to the men’s way of thinking.” I mean the women loved it,” she wrote in her 1976 autobiography, “A Coal Miner’s Daughter.” “But the men who run the radio stations were scared to death. “When we released it, the people loved it. Wade decision, but Lynn held onto the song for years before she felt fans were ready to listen. Bayless, was recorded prior to the Roe v. “The Pill,” written by Lorene Allen, Don McHan and T.D. And that was not something I ever had to think twice about until the lyric finally hit me.” “She talks about being able to wear the clothes she wants,” Collins, who now volunteers as a case manager on the Kentucky Health Justice Network’s abortion resources hotline, said of 1975’s “The Pill.” “Because of my access to birth control, I could go out to bars with my friends and wear miniskirts. But it wasn’t until high school that she began to put together the context of what Lynn was singing about. In addition to growing up in a home where classic country music was part of the lexicon, Collins grew up in a family that talked about abortion and birth control, which led her to start volunteering as an escort at a clinic in Kentucky. Kate Collins, 34, was not of the generation who heard “The Pill” or “One’s on the Way” when they first played on the radio, but Lynn’s voice provided a soundtrack to her childhood. In November, Kentucky voters will decide whether to eliminate the right to abortion in the state’s constitution. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 case, creating a massive shift in reproductive rights across the country. Wade became a landmark legal decision protecting abortion rights, died only months after the U.S. Lynn, who sang about birth control after Roe v. Some of her songs reflected the lives of many rural women and mothers, lamenting their invisible labor and the repressive and gendered roles that kept them tied to a singular identity.įor some of those working in reproductive health care today in her home state of Kentucky, Lynn’s music proves all too relevant. (AP) - Loretta Lynn, the Grammy-winning country music icon who died Tuesday at 90, lived through - and sang about - decades of advancements for women’s social movements, achievements now endangered.Ī mother multiple times over by the end of her teens, she gave voice to those who had historically had little control over childbirth and their own sexuality.
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