Lizzo says her decision to support abortion rights “doesn’t matter if I had a personal experience or knew someone” and has condemned the US Supreme Court for turning the law into “a weapon against human rights.”
In a new cover story for Vanity Fairthe Grammy- and Emmy-winning artist discussed her $500,000 donation to Planned Parenthood and the National Network of Abortion Funds — which was then matched by Live Nation — after toppling Roe v. Wade. The singer shared that she went to both organizations about any real action she could take to address the consequences of the overthrow of the… roeand was told to donate.
Although she knows people who have had abortions, Lizzo said her donation was not a decision based on her own experience. But that she ultimately didn’t have to have an abortion to understand how important it is for people to have access to safe reproductive health care.
“I know plenty of people who would have died if they hadn’t had that procedure,” the singer told the magazine. “It shouldn’t matter if I had a personal experience or knew someone; it shouldn’t matter what my opinion is. Opinions are what got us into this shit in the first place – what people think people should be doing with their bodies.
She added: “Today we are not creating laws that support people with health care, let alone abortions. What about giving people access and resources and meddling in their damn business?’
Lizzo also explained her feelings about the response of the current White House administration since then and what she sees as a US Supreme Court that has “politicized the law” and is complicit in maintaining “white male supremacy” in the country.
“The fact is, I don’t know what they’re doing. I see they’re listening, but we’re in a post ‘thought and prayer society’. Thoughts and prayers just don’t fucking do it anymore,” she said of the Biden government, which she campaigned for in the 2020 election. “I do not condemn this current government. I’m just really curious what real steps they can take.”
Her words about the Supreme Court were harsher, with the… Watch out for the big grrrls host said the court has “politicized the law and turned it into a weapon against human rights”.
“An overwhelming amount of people disagreed with what the Supreme Court did,” she said. “It’s about power and control. It’s about white male supremacy; it’s always been about white male supremacy in this country and the people complicit in maintaining it – that’s a lot of white women. The women who voted for Donald Trump. The facade that ‘America, we’re all in this together’. No, we are not.”
Lizzo cited the dehumanization of black people, especially black women, in the US since its founding. She told the magazine that the way black women have been treated has left her “very hopeless.”
“I’d love to be an optimist, but I’m a chronically disappointed optimist,” she explained. “The way black women have been treated in this country makes me feel very hopeless. I don’t think there was a time when [we] treated fairly and with respect. If I see hope in this country, it will come from the responsibility of the people who have the privilege. As a fat black woman, this country has never progressed; it has stayed about the same for me.”