Cardi-B, a 25-year-old rapper and award winning musician used her time on stage this week at MTV’s Video Music Awards (VMAs) to brag about how she not only had the baby everyone wanted her to abort, but that she’s “still winning awards” – thus driving a stake through the heart of the myth that a woman can’t be a mother and have a successful career at the same time.
“A couple of months ago, a lot of people were saying, you know, you’re gambling your career, you’re about to have a baby, what are you doing?” Cardi B said seconds after winning the VMA for “Best New Artist” on Monday night. “And you know, I had a baby, I carried the baby. And now, I’m still winning awards!”
Katie Yoder, writing for Catholic Vote, praised the rapper for her gutsy comments at the awards, which were heard by millions, saying that “regardless of whether or not she is pro-life, her remarks are inspiring pro-life messaging in the media.”
It’s not the first time Cardi B has made her opinion known about Kulture, her surprise one-month-old baby who she had with husband and rapper Offset. In an interview in April, she spoke about how people were pressuring her to abort the baby. But she “didn’t want to deal with the whole abortion thing.”
She added: “It just really bothers me and it disgusts me because I see a lot of women online like, ‘Oh, I feel sorry for you. Oh, your career is over’ . . . Like as a woman, why can’t I have both? Like, why do I gotta choose a career or a baby?”
At the end of the show, she added that if it were an option, she “wouldn’t even let anybody know” about the baby “because I don’t want to hear people’s opinions and I don’t want people to make me feel like a blessing should be a regret.”
As Yoder points out, Cardi B was definitely not “talking the talking points” prescribed by the abortion industry. In 2015, Cecile Richards, then president of Planned Parenthood, called abortion the “key to women’s opportunity to be financially secure and pursue their dreams.” NARAL Pro-Choice America president Ilyse Hogue also wrote that, because of her abortion, she was able to “finish my education and dedicate my life to human rights and environmental work and political change.”
Like Cardi B experienced, the vast majority of women (73.8%) say they felt at least some kind of pressure to have an abortion, which is why sometimes giving them a more positive message can make all the difference.
At a 2017 press briefing, March for Life president Jeanne Mancini stressed this point when she said that women “have that incredible strength in them to choose life” and “often, that’s just all they need to hear, is ‘You’ve got this. You can do this.’”
And whether they know it or not, Yoder says, Cardi B and her media fans are spreading that message.
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