Was the song Abortion Papers inspired by Madonnas Papa Don't Preach?

[Thriller_MJ]

I was just listening to the 2nd disc on Bad 25 and reading the lyrics to it as each song was playing, anyway, when Abortion Papers came on and I read the lyrics they did remind me of Papa Don't Preach, could Michael have been inspired to write Abortion Papers after hearing the Madonna track? Why else would MJ write a song about Abortion if he hadn't have heard the Madonna track?

I'm sure you are all aware that Papa Don't Preach is one of Madonnas most successful and well known tracks, however, at it's core it's a song about abortion and the pressures that woman face with that choice. I can't help but wonder if Michael heard it and wrote AP. Papa Don't Preach came out in 1986 and according to Bad 25 Abortion Papers was written in 1987.

 

[SarahJ]

Thats true. I remember at the time all the debate, heavy at times, about abortion in the 80's. And 70's for that matter.

 

[HIStoric]

Why else would MJ write a song about Abortion if he hadn't have heard the Madonna track?

Not like it's a big social issue in the United States or anything...

 

[SarahJ]

And Canada. It was a part of some members of the Women's movent in the 70's and then became big again in the 80's. I remember the contraversy being a hot topic with politicians and artist's etc... Big thing in the 70's was Paul Anka's "Your Having My Baby" and then Loretta Lynn afterwards released "The Pill". That was a big deal then and sit was discussed big time in the press, with Loretta Lynn getting alot of PR.

I'm not surprised MJ didn't release it. Considering all the negative press he was getting at the time, they would have roasted him. Point is MJ didn't need to base a song off Madonna. It was everywhere.

 

[Moviefan2k4]

I don't know about the song's inspiration, but its one of my favorites from Bad 25. The issue of abortion has exploded since Roe v. Wade in '73, with millions of children being murdered in the womb for the sake of convenience every year. And before anyone objects, that's a medical and statistical fact: you don't need religion of any kind or a professional degree to know either one. Medical science has proven beyond a reasonable doubt, that life begins at the moment of conception...and constant polls keep showing the vast majority of abortions aren't done for rape, incest, or to save anyone's life. Instead, they're chosen by scared and/or selfish mothers, often influenced by greedy third parties who see no inherent value in a baby's life. Why do you think so many pro-abortion groups want to outlaw the use of ultrasounds in the clinics? Simple - it reveals the truth of the child's humanity. The mother might suddenly give in to conscience after seeing an ultrasound, which means the abortion clinic loses money. But thirty years ago, Michael was brave enough to record a full song about it, with lyrics deeming it "against the Word of God". I only wish he'd have released it back then, and fiercely defended it against pro-death groups.

 

[KOPV]

It was of course interesting that it was a huge pressing issue of the time.. The interesting thing to me about it is... If this song was meant for the BAD album, he wrote this when he was at his height of infliction with the decision of separating from Jehovah Witness.. Makes me wonder if that was not going on at the time, IF the song would have been released, what he may have been going through emotionally with the song at the time, and considering when writing this, his image was such a clean image.. How gutsy it was to even entertain the thought of the song.. I also wonder how the world would have reacted to a song like that from Michael Jackson at the time.

 

[Moviefan2k4]

It was of course interesting that it was a huge pressing issue of the time.. The interesting thing to me about it is... If this song was meant for the BAD album, he wrote this when he was at his height of infliction with the decision of separating from Jehovah Witness.. Makes me wonder if that was not going on at the time, IF the song would have been released, what he may have been going through emotionally with the song at the time, and considering when writing this, his image was such a clean image.. How gutsy it was to even entertain the thought of the song.. I also wonder how the world would have reacted to a song like that from Michael Jackson at the time.

I think it would've upped the controversy, but a lot more people would've respected him for it in the end. It takes guts to stand for truth, especially when its not popular.

 

[AliCat]

Legal History of Abortion (1821 – Present)
THE HISTORY OF ABORTION IN AMERICA

1821 Connecticut passes the first law in the United States barring abortions after “quickening,” which were usually performed by administering poison to the woman after the fourth month of pregnancy.

1856 Dr. Horatio Storer establishes a national drive through the American Medical Association to make all abortions illegal. Prior to this, first trimester abortions were legal or a misdemeanor in most states.

1860 Twenty states have laws limiting abortion.

1873 Supported by the American Medical Association (AMA), the Comstock Act bans the dissemination by mail of information on abortion or artificial contraceptives.

1875 In a speech called “Social Purity,” suffragist and feminist Susan B. Anthony spoke out against abortion, joining many other feminists who decried abortion in the late 19th century.

1890 Statues, advocated by the AMA, outlaw abortion unless necessary to save the life of the mother.

1920s Rise of the birth control movement, headed by Margaret Sanger, a proponent of eugenics.

1962 Terri Finkbine provided an emotional face in the media for quest to legalize abortion. While pregnant, she took thalidomide, a drug found to cause severe birth defects. She requested a therapeutic abortion and was denied.

1963 The Society for Human Abortion is established in San Francisco and challenges the law by openly providing information on abortion and contraception.

1965 Griswold v. Connecticut was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution protected a right to privacy. The case involved a Connecticut law that prohibited the use of contraceptives.

1967 Colorado is the first state to liberalize its abortion laws. At a point when abortion is classified as felony in 49 states, Dr. Leon Belous is convicted for referring a woman to an illegal abortionist, which leads to a 1969 California Supreme Court decision in favor of a right to choose abortion. President Kennedy forms the Presidential Advisory Council on the Status of Women and calls for the repeal of abortion laws.

1969 Abortionists Lawrence Lader and Dr. Bernard Nathanson help found the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, now called NARAL Pro-Choice America. Nathanson later renounced his abortion stance and admitted to falsifying statistics in order to garner sympathy for the pro-abortion cause.

1970s Harvey Karnen, who performed illegal abortions despite not being a physician, developed a flexible curette that made the vacuum aspiration method safer for the woman, causing it to proliferate in the U.S. as the method of choice for early abortions.

1970 Alaska, Hawaii, New York, and Washington repeal bans on abortion after viability, making abortion available at the request of a woman and her doctor up to 24 weeks. Dr. Jane Hodgson is convicted in Minnesota for performing an abortion on a 23-year-old woman, a felony at the time. The case was appealed, but not ruled on by the state supreme court until after Roe v. Wade.

1971 The portions of the Comstock Act dealing with abortion and contraception are repealed.

1972 Eisenstadt v. Baird extended the Griswold decision to unmarried couples, since the “right to privacy” in Griswold only applied to marital relationships. (Both the Eisenstadt and Griswold decisions were cited in Roe)

1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision strikes down all state laws that had previously made abortion illegal. Doe v. Bolton, the companion to Roe v. Wade, makes abortion on demand legal through all nine months of pregnancy by opening up the definition of a woman’s health. The National Right to Life Committee, a non-religious group, is officially incorporated in response to Roe v. Wade, holding its first convention in Detroit.

1974 Nellie Gray organized the first March for Life in the Capital, which continues annually, and began garnering support for a Human Life Amendment, which had been introduced in Congress the previous year. Federally-funded research using fetal tissue is banned by the National Science Foundation Authorization Act.

1975 Bigelow v. Virginia invalidates Virginia’s ban that prohibited advertising abortion.

1976 Singleton v. Wulff gives abortion clinics and providers the ability to challenge abortion laws instead of individual patients. Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Darforth changes some of the abortion laws, invalidating spousal and parental consent before an abortion. Congress adopts the first Hyde Amendment barring the use of federal Medicaid funds to provide abortions to low-income women; the provision is upheld by the Supreme Court in 1980.

1977 A revised Hyde Amendment is passed allowing states to deny Medicaid funding except in cases of rape, incest, or “severe and long-lasting” damage to the woman’s physical health. Maher v. Roe, Beal v. Doe, and Poelker v. Doe uphold prohibition of abortions using public funding or in public hospitals, unless “medically necessary.”

1979 Bellotti v. Baird sets standard for parental consent laws. Colautti v. Franklin strikes down Pennsylvania statue that requires abortion techniques that give the best opportunity for the fetus to be born alive after viability.

1980s The pro-life movement turns to the grassroots level, opening Pregnancy Help Centers (PHCs) and Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) to help women facing unplanned pregnancies choose life.

1983 Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health removes requirements that doctors provide patients with information on alternatives to abortion, fetal development, and medical risks of abortion, in addition to other regulations. Planned Parenthood Association of Kansas City, Mo v. Ashcroft invalidates a Missouri statute that required some abortions to be in a hospital. Companion to Akron I. Simopoulos v. Virginia upholds conviction of a doctor who performed an abortion during the second trimester outside of a licensed hospital.

1984 With both the White House and Congress majority pro-life following the election, Congress works to pass a Human Life Amendment and Human Life Bill (in case the amendment was rejected by the states). Pro-life advocates divided their support between the amendment and bill, lobbying against each other and causing both to fail.

1986 Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists invalidates Pennsylvania statute that required informed consent and other abortion regulations.

1988 American Collegians for Life is founded. In 2006, the group is renamed Students for Life of America.

1989 Webster v. Reproductive Health Services upholds the prohibition of public facilities or personnel to perform abortions and the requirement of ultrasounds after 20 weeks.

http://law.studentsforlife.org/legalities-of-abortion/

Since Michael was working on the "Bad" album in the mid 1980's, I left the history of abortions at that time period, instead of the present (2009).

In "Abortion Papers," Jackson approaches the matter carefully (and ambiguously): rather than presenting a dogmatic political perspective, he personalizes it through the story of a conflicted girl raised in a deeply religious home and her Bible-admonishing father. In his notes for the track, Jackson wrote, "I have to do it in a way so I don't offend girls who have gotten abortions or bring back guilt trips so it has to be done carefully....I have to really think about it."

Several recording artist's have explored the subject of abortion, including Neil Young, Madonna, Sinead O' Conner and Lauren Hill, among other's.

https://www.theatlantic.com/enterta...-to-michael-jacksons-unreleased-demos/262242/

 

[Moviefan2k4]

With due respect, I think trying to sugar-coat the subject of abortion is a huge mistake for anyone. That said, there's a difference between personally condemning someone ("You're just a blood-thirsty baby-killer!"), and telling the truth in love ("Life begins at the moment of conception; science has proven it. Would you want to be in your child's position?")

I guess my point is that no law will make everyone obey, but that doesn't change the fact of abortion being horribly evil. Anyone with a conscience should be doing whatever they can to save as many children as possible, even if its through something small like signing pro-life petitions or writing to state reps. This whole practice of deeming the unborn as "non-persons" and killing them through surgery has resulted in casualties nearly equal to the second World War (60 million people). The vast majority of them are not chosen because of rape, incest, or medical necessity, either.

 

[SmoothMJ]

Hi respect.

I'm not particularly a religious person, and I believe in women having a choice. But I also believe that there should be some controls over how late a child should be aborted.

Can I ask, do you believe in abortion without control and at any time? For instance abortion at 25 weeks, 30 weeks, 35 weeks?

 

[Moviefan2k4]

^ I am sure you will read that "science has proven that life begins at conception" at many anti-abortion, fundamentalist Christian websites, but in reality there is no consensus in science as to when life begins, so that stance can hardly be defined as THE TRUTH.

https://www.wired.com/2015/10/science-cant-say-babys-life-begins/

That article is mainly about the so-called definition of "personhood", which is currently being treated as an excuse to get away with as many murders as possible under the illusion of "a woman's right to choose". the fact of the matter is that unless she was raped, the woman already made her choice by having consensual sex. And while I truly have compassion for rape victims, even the horror of that violation does not excuse murder. The plain simple fact is that from the moment of conception, a so-called "zygote" is 100% genetically identical to a grown human adult. All that's needed is air, food, water, and time to grow. Those facts have always been true; they didn't change just because we suddenly had the technology to see it.

BTW, I have always found the extreme Christian obsession with abortion weird, since the Bible does not make any mention of abortion. The verses that are used for supporting the Christian churches' extreme obsession with abortion are extremely weak in actually supporting such a strong anti-abortion stance.

There's lots of other words not explicitly stated in Scripture either, like "computer" or "dinosaur". That's where the application of Biblical principles come in. In the 18th chapter of Matthew's gospel, Jesus said that it was better for someone to be thrown into the ocean with a stone around their neck, than to hurt a child who trusted in Him (verse 6). Given such a bold stance on how kids are treated after birth, its more than reasonable He would have an even harsher one against abortion. He also said, "“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven" (verse 10). So clearly, Jesus cares very much about the safety and proper treatment of children.

(Exodus 12:29)

Now THAT is what I call evil!

While that specific incident is emotionally disturbing, it illustrates perfectly God's rights as Creator. Humor me for a moment, and ask yourself a few questions. First, how do we recognize evil in the absolute sense, without an ultimate standard of goodness? Just because something bothers our feelings, does that automatically make it wrong for everyone? There's plenty of things which happen in the world every day, that others find sickening while we may enjoy them. So without an ultimate standard, morality is based completely on preference...even with terrors such as the Holocaust or the 9/11 attacks. Secondly, if God is the Creator of all life, why would He not have the right to take it back at His own discretion? Ultimately speaking, parents don't even create their own children; they simply unite the DNA necessary to complete their genetic code in the mother's womb. From a Biblical standpoint, the reason humans are banned from taking life on a whim is because we're not God, and we didn't create it. He did, so He can.

Women are condemned for abortion but then what about the story of Onan? The guy who refused to impregnate the widow of his dead brother and wasted his sperm on the floor and God struck him with death for that. So does that mean every guy who ever masturbates without impregnating a woman also commits a deadly sin against life? If we are going to be consistent.

The account of Onan is not about masturbation, but rather disobedience of God's command to continue his brother's bloodline. The verses make it very clear that Onan had sex with Tamar...but he removed himself from her before climax because he wanted his own way more than God's.

I don't care who believes in what and who applies what religious rules in their own lives, but the churches have no right to force those religious rules and convictions into state laws and on people who do not buy into their religion.

The Constitution disagrees, with the First Amendment's only restriction being Congress can't make any one faith legally binding across the whole country. That's as far as it goes, though; the rest of the Constitution makes no reference to a "separation of church and state". Instead, the phrase comes from an 1802 letter by Thomas Jefferson, written to the Danbury Baptist Association from Connecticut. I made a video on it a couple of years ago, where I read both letters on camera...

[video=youtube;uD5GsY2vNsg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD5GsY2vNsg[/video]

I think it is time for the church to shut up and get out of women's wombs. Especially when they are hardly the epitome of good morals themselves (pedophilia scandals, corruption etc.).

That is what's called "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". In other words, the abuse of a standard does not automatically warrant its abandonment. Should we get rid of laws against murder, rape, or theft, since they're also consistent with Scripture?

 

[SmoothMJ]

I didn't say there shouldn't be rules in abortion. What I take issues with is calling people "murderers" if they went through abortion. Indicrectly comparing them to nazis (that's what the holocaust parallel does). And that includes the rape victim, the incest victim, the 12-year-old who was raped by her uncle etc. - according to some Christians. As if their suffering isn't enough in itself fundamentalist Christians do the most to stigmatize them as "murderes". (And for the record, no I never had an abortion.)

No. Problem.

I wasn't arguing with you. I was genuinely interested in your views.

I have an interest in this subject as my 'birth mother' was going to have me aborted, as she was single and very young when she fell pregnant with me. My 'parent mother' (her older sister) talked her out of it and offered to bring me up in her family.

I grew up not knowing what had happened, until I was told at 18 - with both 'mothers' present. My birth mother was, and still is, traumatised by what she nearly did although I understand and hold no malice towards her.

I now have two mothers and feel blessed. But I always think there should be more help and advice to people thinking about abortion, especially when I look at my own children who may have never been born.

Personally I am glad we don't have the ancient views on abortion. But I also worry that we have gone too far the other way.

 

[SmoothMJ]

I suppose, with my experience, I'm somewhere in the middle on this issue.

A termination for some people is absolutely the right thing. For others, again from personal experience, it's not the only option available even if they think it is.

I am also convinced that, for a small number of people, it's a acceptable life style choice that is used when they have decided they have 'made a mistake' - which I'm not sure I can condone.

As I said, I wouldn't, and my children wouldn't, be here if my 'aunty' had not talked my birth mother out of abortion. That's scary on so many levels.

The ultra hard stance against abortion that existed, and still exists in some countries, was and is deplorable. I'm just concerned that, as with most things, the world fights against one 'extreme' by launching into the opposite extreme.

 

[Moviefan2k4]

^ To make it short:

1) Prove that God exists.
2) Prove that the God that exists is the Christian God.
3) Prove that the Bible is that Christian God's word.

Then only then you can reference this God and religion as some sort of moral absolute based on which you call people "murderers" if they go ahead with an abortion but in the same breath you give excuses to horrible mass genocides that are committed in the name of this same God.

I can give evidence for all three, but I can't force you or anyone else to believe it. As for the so-called "genocides", you need to check the Scriptures again. Many of them were not annihilations, but simply driving groups out of lands that God had promised to the Israelites. In many cases, the only ones who died were those who chose to stay behind and fight...even after being warned what would happen. You can tell because while many of the descriptions use terms like "utterly destroy" a certain nation or people, its not long after that Israel's talking to or fighting the same group again.

And I don't really care about where "separation of church and state" was first used. That's besides the point. Point is, that is a good principle and especially in increasingly diverse societies you cannot give privileges to one religion over others, so the best way to go is a secular state where everyone is free to practice their religion or non-religion, but doesn't have the right to force its dogmas into state law thus on other people.

You're free to your opinion, just like everyone else...but again, the Constitution disagrees. The Tenth Amendment specifically says that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people". So for example, the right to life is explicitly mentioned in the Constitution...which means no one has a legal right to take an innocent life who's committed no crime. This would include the unborn by definition...which makes all laws supporting abortion in violation of the Tenth Amendment.

 

[Moviefan2k4]

No, it is not "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" to point out the extreme moral corruption in an organization that claims itself to be the gatekeeper of "God's morals" and that is trying to dictate "morals" to society. It is pointing out hypocrisy.

Actually it is the "Scripture" that relativizes rape and murder. Have you ever read the Old Testament? All the rape and murder that is sanctioned and even ordered by God? Yes, I know your argument it is saying it and God is "absolute morality" no matter what abhorrent things he supposedly does or orders people to do (all according to the Scripture). "Do not murder, except when I tell you to (which is a LOT)." "Do not rape except when I tell you to kidnap the virgin girls of the enemy and then have sex with them and if you don't find pleasure in them you can kick them out." Some "absolute morals" there.

Name one verse where God specifically commands the rape of anyone, in either Testament. Yes, there's instances where people were raped...but none where it was commanded or endorsed by God.

The fact is, there is no "absolute morality".

That's an absolute philosophical claim in itself, and thus self-defeating. You can't have it both ways; either some things are absolutely right and wrong for everyone, irrespective of time and place...or they aren't. In the latter case, we might as well get rid of all laws regarding murder then, in every country...because to enforce them would be to support a moral absolute.