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Billie Eilish Almost Cancelled Her Texas Show Because Of The Recent Abortion Law

Photo credit: Rich Fury - Getty Images
Photo credit: Rich Fury - Getty Images

Billie Eilish has criticised the Texas abortion legislation, revealing at a festival that she almost cancelled her show because of the ‘sh*t law’.

During her performance at the Austin City Limits Music Festival on Saturday the singer – who just confirmed she’s a Glastonbury Festival 2022 headliner – told her fans that she was close to throwing the towel in on her performance due to the stringent law.

The legislation prohibits abortion providers from performing a termination if they can detect foetal heart tones until six weeks, long before many women even know that they are pregnant. The law, which came into effect on September 1, 2021, allows exceptions for medical emergencies only.

The law also means that citizens have the right to sue abortion providers and anyone who ‘aids and abets’ a woman to get an abortion, including an Uber driver who drives them to the clinic or a friend/family member who gives them financial aid to undergo the procedure.

‘I’m sick and tired of old men,’ Eilish told her fans during the concert, admitting that she was close to cancelling the performance because of the ‘sh*t law’ in the state.

‘When they made that sh*t a law, I almost didn’t want to do the show, because I wanted to punish this f*cking place for allowing that to happen here,’ she added, before noting that she continued to go ahead with her performance for her fans.

She then raised her middle finger in the air and yelled: ‘My body, my f*cking choice.’ Behind the performer, the words ‘bans off our bodies’ appeared on several screens.

Photo credit: Rich Fury - Getty Images
Photo credit: Rich Fury - Getty Images

Last month the singer took to Instagram to open up about the lack of support from men when it come to women’s rights.

‘Makes me sick how many men say nothing when it comes to women’s rights,’ she wrote on the social media platform, as well as sharing a photo of the statement: ‘If you and your “homies” or bros’ aren’t talking about the abortion laws in Texas, chances are you’re part of a problem.’

Photo credit: Rich Fury - Getty Images
Photo credit: Rich Fury - Getty Images

After the law came into effect actor Uma Thurman wrote a column for The Washington Post in which she shared her own experience of abortion.

‘I started my acting career at 15, working in an environment where I was often the only kid in the room,’ she wrote. ‘In my late teens, I was accidentally impregnated by a much older man. I was living out of a suitcase in Europe, far from my family, and about to start a job. I struggled to figure out what to do. I wanted to keep the baby, but how?’

Thurman added that she and her family agreed that ‘termination was the right choice’.

‘My heart was broken nonetheless,’ she added. ‘The abortion I had as a teenager was the hardest decision of my life, one that caused me anguish then and that saddens me even now, but it was the path to the life full of joy and love that I have experienced. Choosing not to keep that early pregnancy allowed me to grow up and become the mother I wanted and needed to be.’

Photo credit: Stephane Cardinale - Corbis - Getty Images
Photo credit: Stephane Cardinale - Corbis - Getty Images

The mother-of-two said she watched the abortion law’s implementation last month with ‘great sadness and something akin to horror’.

‘This law is yet another discriminatory tool against those who are economically disadvantaged, and often, indeed, against their partners. Women and children of wealthy families retain all the choices in the world, and face little risk,’ she wrote.

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