Lizzo Is Absolutely Correct About Abortion

“I feel like everybody in America got my motherfucking name in their motherfucking mouth for no motherfucking reason,” Lizzo ranted during a Special tour Toronto show this weekend. The comment was a cheeky reference to some rather choice (read: fatphobic) words Kanye West recently said about her body. And just two weeks ago, conservatives were pressed about the classically trained flutist playing a slave owner’s flute. But Lizzo pays little mind to the haters: “I’m minding my fat Black beautiful business!” she said to a crowd of cheering fans.

But the 34-year-old artist is certainly not shying away from politics and activism. In a new Vanity Fair profile, Lizzo talked extensively about women’s rights—particularly, the impact that the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade reversal will have (and has had) on the bodies of people of color. “Black people have been dehumanized so much—especially Black women. I’d like to be an optimist, but I’m a chronically disappointed optimist,” she said. “The way Black women have been treated in this country has made me feel very hopeless. I don’t think there was a time when [we] were treated fairly and with respect.”

After the SCOTUS news broke back in June, Lizzo donated $500,000 to Planned Parenthood and the National Network of Abortion Funds—a sum that was matched by Live Nation, her tour promoter. Her financial contributions seem to be a frustrated response to the government’s inaction, which has left her unimpressed. While she doesn’t “condemn” the current administration (and even campaigned for Biden), she wants to know what “real steps” they’re planning to take in regards to reproductive rights: “I don’t know what they’re doing,” she said. “I see they’re listening, but we’re in a post-thoughts-and-prayers society. Thoughts and prayers just don’t fucking cut it anymore.”

For Lizzo, at the heart of the Roe reversal is white male supremacy and those who do little to challenge it: “It’s about power and control. […] It’s always been about white male supremacy in this country, and the people who are complicit in helping uphold it—who are a lot of white women,” she explained. “The women who voted for Donald Trump. The façade that ‘America, we’re all in this together.’ No, we’re not.”

While Lizzo hasn’t had an abortion herself, she doesn’t believe that you need to have a “personal” connection to a cause to advocate for it:

I know plenty of people who would have died if they hadn’t had that procedure. It shouldn’t matter if I had a personal experience or knew somebody; it shouldn’t matter what my opinion is. Opinions is what got us [into] this shit in the first place—what people think people should be doing with their bodies. These days, we don’t create laws that support people having health care, never mind abortions. How about letting people have access and resources and mind their fucking business?

Whether it’s reproductive politics or her music, Black women are always at the center. “I am not making music for white people. I am a Black woman, I am making music from my Black experience, for me to heal myself [from] the experience we call life,” she said. “If I can help other people, hell yeah. Because we are the most marginalized and neglected people in this country. We need self-love and self-love anthems more than anybody.”

For that, we salute you Lizzo. It’s “About Damn Time.”