Bodies
Why Was the Greatest Pro-Life Song Written by the Sex Pistols?

2,052 words

Abortion is one of those topics which need to be thought through before you start flapping your gums. It’s like Israel, the death penalty, and assisted suicide. Don’t go to the meeting unprepared, and don’t take rash and emotive stupidity to an intellectual gunfight. Always remember that you can lead an ass to reason, but you can’t make him think. Before you speak out, whatever your take on one of these hot tamale topics, at least be sure you arrived at your conclusion using reason rather than the passions, David Hume’s old sparring partners. At least, that’s the way I see it.

I’ve got my own views on abortion but they are unimportant here. Essentially those views are what any conservative man of my father’s generation would have had and I have little or nothing to add to the debate. This is also influenced by the fact that I myself have no children, and for the same reason Theophrastus gave. When he was an old man, the wily pre-Socratic philosopher was asked by a fellow Athenian why he had never become a father. “Because”, he said, “I am fond of children”. Exactly the case with me. I would have made a lousy father and there would be a couple of people out there today who would have been better unborn, unless they had successfully freed themselves from my attempts at fatherhood and made their own way in the world.  Sometimes you can be proud of the things you didn’t do in life.

But, as noted, the topic of abortion is one which should be approached with great caution. When I was a young man I held the opinion – or at least used it to impress vaguely feminist girls – that when a vote in the House of Commons was held on abortion, all the male Members of Parliament should leave the House, leaving only the women to cast the vote. I realize now what simpering tosh this is, but the only thing I would say is that the reason abortion is so contentious is that it involves something sacred to the religious, and equally sacred to the non-believer, that being the unborn child. When people who believe in God and people who do not believe in God agree on something, that something is important, doesn’t matter what it is. And abortion is in that rare category. We all know what it is biologically, but what is it (as we might say) existentially?

In my second year at university in 1982, I moved off campus into town. We were all required to do this for the obvious reason that the new influx of first-years, or “Freshmen” as the Americans rather fetchingly call them, required accommodation. There were dispensations that enabled some students to stay on campus in year 2, families and people with disabilities and so on, but the rest of us pushed off into Sin City – aka Brighton, on England’s south coast – to look for apartments. I had a tremendous run of luck with both the places I rented and the people I shared with, but one episode is relevant here.

One day, a flat-mate took me aside and asked me if it was okay if someone, a female friend, came to stay with him and his girlfriend in the big bedroom. They got that room because they were a couple, while me and my mate were just a couple of single guys, so we took the two smaller rooms. Those were the days when a student could still afford an apartment in England, and also the time of genuine student democracy, at least in my flat. Me and my buddy said yes, of course she can stay. But something in his look told me that he was inviting this friend for some other reason than a bizarre sexual triste. He said, “She’s just had an abortion.”

Remember that, because almost exactly the same line will crop up again shortly. Her own apartment was full of musicians, the air thick with cannabis at all times, and reggae playing ditto. So she needed somewhere to rest up. Actually, I knew the girl and – full declaration – quite fancied her. I’ll call her Kim.

Me and my other flat-mates behaved admirably for the week or so Kim was in the flat recovering from her – or rather her unborn baby’s – termination. Isn’t that an odd use of language? There’s a curious sort of split personality some words take on, particularly euphemisms. Do you know what an abortion is called by medical staff in the UK (and perhaps elsewhere)? RCP. Removal of the products of conception. That’s some euphemism. And women are said to have “had a termination”, when in fact it is the fetus’s life which is terminated. Anyway, me and my mate suspended our near-nightly pool matches on the half-size table which was the pride of the living-room. We packed up smoking in the flat for a week. There was little or no drinking. We crept around the place like priests. One day the door was open to the bedroom and I inadvertently looked in and saw one of those things that stays with you, even after all these years.

Sitting on the bed in pyjamas, hair tangled and eyes red from crying, Kim was thousand-yard staring out of the window at the sky. She looked tired and like someone not lost as a person, but lost in thought. And not momentarily lost, more like someone lost in the universe’s biggest maze. It’s difficult to describe, but she looked like she had gone away. I am pleased to say that when I was last on Facebook a couple of years ago, Kim had become a friend and had become successful in the world of professional show-jumping, both as trainer and rider. She also has children (both also show-jumpers), but I wonder if she ever thinks about the unborn child she had terminated, the one who never even made it to the starting-line. My guess would be, yes, she probably does. It reminds me of a song we used to play a lot at the time of Kim’s abortion in 1982. It was by Scottish band Lloyd Cole and the Commotions and called Rattlesnakes. One line runs:

She’s less than sure if her heart has come to stay in San José.
Her unborn child still haunts her as she speeds down the freeway.

I’d bet that a lot of women who have had abortions are still haunted in the same way.

But there are not many pop songs which tackle the subject of abortion. There are a few Country and Western numbers, as you might expect from a very conservative musical tradition, but about the only pro-life song I had even heard of after a search was Papa Don’t Preach by Madonna. “I’ve made up my mind”, sings La Ciccone, “I’m keeping my baby”. It’s quite quaint when you consider what a troll Madonna became. But, that aside, the subject of termination is one pop musicians and their Svengalis have always tended to avoid. As for current pro-abortion activism making its way into young girls’ heads via the delivery system of pop music, I wouldn’t know. I think the last time I looked at a pop chart was probably out of boredom because we couldn’t play pool in the apartment in 1982. Taylor Swift is apparently pro-choice, so I imagine a lot of her little “Swifty” followers will be following suit.

No, if it’s a pro-life song, or rather an anti-abortion song, you want which has maximum impact, it’s necessary to go a little further back than 1982 to 1977, and the first and only album by British punk figureheads The Sex Pistols. The song Bodies was the second track on the album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.  The song itself as a pure exercise in rock and roll is either a monumental and thrilling wall of sound infused with punk’s very essence, or an irritating racket like the rest of Never Mind the Bollocks. It depends on your taste. But the lyrics, along with the delivery, might be the strongest argument against abortion that exists in the Western popular music canon. As always, any other possible contenders would be appreciated in the comments.

The lyrics to Bodies are worth quoting in full:

She was girl from Birmingham.
She’d just had an abortion.
She was a case of insanity.
Her name was Pauline, she lived in a tree.
She was a no-one who killed her baby.
She’d send her letters from the country.

She was an animal.
She was a bloody disgrace.
Bodies. I’m not an animal.

Mummy. An abortion.
Dragged on a table in a factory.
Illegitimate place to be.
In a packet in a lavatory.
Die little baby, screaming.

Bodies. Screaming, fucking bloody mess.
It’s not an animal.
It’s an abortion.

I’m not a discharge.
I’m not a loss in protein.
I’m not a throbbing squirm.

Urgh!

Fuck this and fuck that.
Fucking all the fuckers.
Fucking brat.
She don’t want a baby that looks like that.
I don’t want a baby that looks like that.

Bodies. I’m not an animal.
Mummy. Urgh.

John Lydon, known then as Johnny Rotten, explained that his lyrics concerned a real woman. This girl from Birmingham, as noted, had just had an abortion. Rather than becoming the wistful, sadly thoughtful figure of Kim all those years ago however, this Pauline (who really lived in a tree) used to show up where the Pistols were recording with her aborted fetus in a clear plastic children’s purse. She was clearly “a case of insanity”.

The album, and the song, caused predictable outrage in the media, far more squeamish 50-odd years ago than it is today. But a lot of the criticism was centered on bad language. “Littered with profanities” was the phrase the posher newspapers used. But the odd thing is that Never Mind the Bollocks is not littered with profanities. The word “fuck” and its cognates appear seven times on the album, of which six are in Bodies, of which five occur in the space of 11 words. You hear the word many more times in some rap songs. Bodies does not rely on the shock value of simple profanity. It is a very deliberate and concentrated statement of disgust. The final line, when Lydon screams “Mummy” I still find moving. I wonder whether any pregnant girl about to book her termination would think again after hearing it.

It loses in transcription and really you need to hear the song. I appreciate The Pistols are not everyone’s cup of tea, but without hearing Lydon’s distorted voice and scream, it doesn’t exactly work on the page.  Lydon himself spoke about the song, and the way he frames its argument is more subtle than you might expect from Britain’s punk laureate. Lydon was and is far more intelligent than many at the time gave him credit for. It’s a shame that the punk icon became the cretin Sid Vicious, who all the evidence suggest was ESN (educationally sub-normal). But Lydon explains:

I don’t think there’s a clearer song about the pain of abortion. The juxtaposition of all those psychic things in your head and all the confusion, the anger, the frustration, you have to capture in those words. The song was hated and loathed. It’s not anti-abortion, it’s not pro-abortion. It’s, “Think about it. Don’t be callous about a human being.” It’s immoral to bring a kid in this world and not give a toss about it.

So, now that abortion is increasingly becoming a simple lifestyle choice, like which kitten-heels you are going to wear to the office that day, or whether to have cinnamon in your latte, maybe the song should make a comeback, endorsed by the Christian political Right. I can’t see Catholic church choirs singing Bodies at Mass (although I would give much to see that), but the disgust that propels the song, the sheer rejection of abortion as a viable choice for a healthy person spat out and screamed, the rawness of the imagery, is at least a change from the sugar-coated, anodyne pap that passes for pop music today. It may not be a comfortable song to listen to, but Bodies was written to make a certain type of listener uncomfortable.