Zara Larsson does it all: Raises awareness of unflattering Wikipedia photos, accidentally wears Burzum dresses to awards shows. The Swedish pop star’s next move can never be guessed. Today, she’s doubling down after receiving backlash for an abortion joke.
On TikTok, a fan posted a video of Larsson performing with overlain text that read: “i didn’t know i was pregnant here but at least my baby got to hear midnight sun before i aborted it.” Larsson commented, “I killed the performance and then you killed it after the performance purrrrrr.” Her joke promptly went viral and inevitably sparked pearl-clutching. In a TikTok she defended her quip and explained why abortion jokes are important:
Sorry, that’s funny. Like, I don’t know what to say. That’s funny. Sorry if you don’t have humor. But also I’m not really here to argue with the people who are very against abortions for whatever reason because we’re so fundamentally different in the way we view the world, at least on this topic. So I’m not here to trying to convince you guys that abortion is healthcare or whatever.
I actually want to have a little one-on-one with the people who — I saw a lot of comments that were like, “This is not something to joke about. I’m so pro-choice. I am as pro-choice as the next person, but abortion is a very serious topic.” And I just want to know why that is. Why do you feel like abortion is only okay when it’s a very hard decision, when it’s something that women have to struggle with going through, when it’s emotionally or physically painful? Why does that make it morally superior to someone just wanting an abortion for whatever reason? Why is it only morally okay when women have to suffer? Now riddle me that. Why can’t it just be okay for a woman to want to have an abortion?
I do agree that we should prevent it, we should teach sexual education to children, we should make sure that we’re like, if you don’t want babies, have birth control. Access to free condoms, free whatever, because people love sex. Just face it. People want to fuck. That’s just human nature. But also that doesn’t mean that you have to have a baby because of it. If you’re in this “I’m pro-choice if the woman’s been raped” — no, baby, if you are pro-choice, you have to be pro-choice always.
And I feel like joking about stuff like that, which is a “serious topic,” it also makes it something that we can just talk about. It doesn’t have to be taboo. It doesn’t have to be this bad thing that women do. If we speak about it in a casual manner, that also makes the women who go through it and who are actually suffering through it, because of course there are women that want their babies but they can’t keep them because they might even have symptoms that’ll make it impossible to — I’ve seen so many cases about this in Texas where women want their children and they have to do abortions because they will not live outside of the womb and they can’t have it because of the fucking policies about it.
So let’s just make more jokes, like the fuck? I don’t know. Abortion is healthcare, what can I say. And it’s not better because women have to suffer.
Meanwhile her remix of PinkPantheress’ “Stateside” is expected to hit the Top 10 in the US next week amid Alysa Liu fever. It would be her first Top 10.
