Despite refraining from social media, Fiona Apple makes sure her voice is heard when necessary, and as anyone familiar with her would guess, she had quite a bit to say about the Supreme Court’s decision last week to overrule Roe v. Wade. Over on her YouTube fanpage Fiona Apple Rocks on Sunday (June 26th), the musician decided that in lieu of her usual regular Q&A series, she wanted to speak out against the lawmakers adamant on making abortion access impossible across the US.
“This is all about control,” Apple said in an emotional, candid video clip. “You know that. It’s all about control. It’s not about life. It’s about control. It’s about control of women, about control of our bodies, about taking our control of our own bodies away, about taking our autonomy and our privacy and our agency away, taking our choices about what we can do with our lives away… It’s about control, just like a fucking sexual assault is about control. That’s why this feels like a sexual assault, ’cause it feels like people’s hands [are] in our bodies that don’t belong there, that we don’t want.”
Between exasperated sighs, Apple went on to speak about her own personal experience as a survivor of sexual assault: “I think that there’s a lot of us, like me, thinking, ‘what if this day had come earlier on in our lives? When someone we are in a relationship with forced themselves on us and we had to be terrified that they were gonna be able to control us for the rest of our lives? And [we’re] terrified of making a decision?’ I was terrified of making a decision when that happened to me… But I wasn’t terrified that I wasn’t gonna be able to make that decision. I knew it was gonna be my choice because it was my choice.”
“This is not over,” Apple continued. “Let’s not let [the Supreme Court] make us forget that they also took away Miranda Rights. So I’m not gonna be giving money to politicians… I’m gonna be giving money directly to abortion funds and to bail funds. I’m so sorry I don’t really have any fucking great things to say, but I don’t think that’s been my role there. I’m just one of a lot of women who need to keep on expressing that we do not fucking accept this.” Watch the clip in full below.
Although she’s long been known as a recluse, Apple is anything but indifferent when it comes to politics. She’s been spotted at Black Lives Matter protests, has donated lofty sums of song royalties, has boycotted the Grammys, and has encouraged her fans to get involved in local politics. Disgraced Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh even served as an inspiration for the track “For Her” from Apple’s 2020 masterpiece Fetch the Bolt Cutters.
