Cyndi Lauper Releases Acoustic Version of 1993 Abortion Rights Song “Sally’s Pigeons”

Updated:

June 26, 2022 9:20 am

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Once the draft showed that the Supreme Court was poised to overturn Roe v. Wade in May of 2022, Cyndi Lauper went to the studio to re-record an acoustic version of her 1993 single “Sally’s Pigeons,” a song she wrote about a friend who died from a botched abortion.

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First released in 1993 as a single off her fourth album, Hat Full of Stars, Lauper wrote “Sally’s Pigeons” along with Mary Chapin Carpenter about a childhood friend who got pregnant in her teens, had a back-alley abortion, and died due to the attempted procedure.

“The Supreme Court’s radical decision today makes the re-recording and re-release of ‘Sally’s Pigeons’ more relevant than ever,” said Lauper in a 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.”

Lauper has always been an outspoken supporter of abortion rights as well as a supporter of the LGBTQ+ community and founded True Colors United, a nonprofit organization addressing the issue of LGBTQ+ specific youth homelessness in the United States, in 2008.

Cyndi Lauper at Planned Parenthood Bans Off Our Bodies march in New York City in May 2022 (Photo: Shore Fire Media)

For the release of her acoustic “Sally’s Pigeons,” Lauper is encouraging fans to donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds, and to use it as a resource to access safe abortion services if needed.

“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,” continued Lauper. “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.”

My heart began to skip to the beat
Of the boy next door
She had her eye across the street
On someone shy and tall
We lived our dreams
And challenged fate
In tears she told me she was late
And Sally let his pigeons out to fly

On the dresser sits a frame
With a photograph
Two little girls in ponytails
Some twenty one years back
She left one night with just a nod
Was lost from some back alley job
I close my eyes and Sally’s pigeons fly
She never saw those birds again
And me, I can’t remember when
A pirate smile hasn’t made me cry
I close my eyes
And Sally’s pigeons fly

Photo: Rebecca Miller / Shore Fire Media