Pro-life Group, Kid Rock Talk 'Abortion'

ByABC News
September 14, 2000, 8:19 PM

September 13 -- Over the course of his rise to prominence, Kid Rock has encountered some (seemingly) strange bedfellows from President Bill Clinton and ABC News' Sam Donaldson to country mavericks Hank Williams Jr. and David Allen Coe. But the strangest may have just arrived.

The anti-abortion group Rock for Life issued a press release today thanking Rock "for revealing the reality of post-abortion trauma for men" in "Abortion," one of two new songs recorded for his multiplatinum archival collection, The History of Rock. Citing lyrics such as "My veins are popping from this love inside/ I've never heard you cry; I've never seen you whine/ But still I must die to get to you/ And if I do, I wonder just how you will see me/ And implicate the things I've done/ I'll see you soon/ Now where's my gun," Rock for Life director Erik Whittington notes that "these haunting lyrics tell the tale of man so tormented with post-abortion suffering that he is on the threshold of committing suicide."

However, the organization a division of the larger American Life League did distance itself from the rest of Rock's work, saying it "does not endorse Kid Rock's music or lifestyle, and unconditionally rejects the idea of suicide."

Rock wasn't available for an immediate reaction, but prior to the album's release, he talked about "Abortion." "Like all my other songs, I write from experience," he said, declining to specify what inspired it. "I'll just leave it at that."

Rock said his main concern with the song which was written several years ago was to deal with the human concerns rather than the political issue: "It's something that a lot of people have gone through, and I know that a lot of people can relate to it. Songs like that help people, provoke thoughts, and make them think, rather than saying, 'I'm pro-abortion or anti-abortion.' Just touching on a subject and telling a tale from the heart makes people think about their own decisions more than anything else."