Cyndi Lauper Releases New Version of Abortion Rights Song ‘Sally’s Pigeons’

Cyndi Lauper has released a new version of her 1993 song ‘Sally’s Pigeons’ in response to the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion in the United States. The song was originally inspired by the story of Lauper’s friend, who received a back-alley abortion after becoming pregnant and died due to the attempted procedure. Check out ‘Sally’s Pigeons (Redux 2022)’ below.

“The Supreme Court’s radical decision today makes the re-recording and re-release of ‘Sally’s Pigeons’ more relevant than ever,” Lauper wrote in a social media statement. “In my childhood, women didn’t have reproductive freedom and 50 years later we find ourselves in a time warp where one’s freedom to control their own body has been stripped away. When I wrote this song with Mary Chapin Carpenter in 1991, we wrote about two little girls who dreamt of stretching their wings like the pigeons they watched that flew above them. They dreamt of being free. But freedom then for women and unfortunately now comes at a big price. If we don’t have control over our own bodies then we have no real freedom. We are second class citizens. We need to mobilize. We need to let our voices be heard.”