Ed Sheeran is mad that pro-lifers are playing his song “Small Bump” to encourage voters to vote against a referendum to repeal Ireland’s abortion ban.
“I have not given approval for this use,” Sheeran wrote in an Instagram story last week after learning that pro-lifers were playing the song in Dublin’s city center, according to The Guardian. “It does not reflect what the song is about.”
On Friday, Irish voters will decide if they want to repeal eighth amendment of their constitution — which outlaws abortion unless the life of the mother is at risk. In the song about an unborn baby that dies before it is born, Sheeran describes what the baby looks like.
You’re just a small bump unknown, you’ll grow into your skin
With a smile like hers and a dimple beneath your chin
Finger nails the size of a half grain of rice, and eyelids closed to be soon opened wide
A small bump, in four months you’ll open your eyes.
He concludes the song by saying that he can’t understand why the baby lost his or her life in the womb.
‘Cause you were just a small bump unborn for four months then torn from life
Maybe you were needed up there but we’re still unaware as why.
If we take Sheeran at his word that the song is not about abortion — and we should, as he wrote it — it doesn’t put the song at odds with the pro-life message that life inside the womb is precious and deserves protection. Whether a baby’s life was lost at the hands of an abortionist or in a miscarriage, it is still a tragedy that deserves to be mourned. Acknowledging that a baby is human in the womb and that in a matter of months he will open his eyes and take his first breath is to recognize truth, which is so often shunned from pro-choice rhetoric.
If one accepts the scientific truth that life begins at conception and that a baby is a baby with its own unique genetic information from day one, then one cannot favor abortion. While much of the public debate between pro-lifers and pro-choicers centers around the legality of abortion, the difference between the two sides is much simpler than that. One side affirms the humanity of the unborn and believes tiny humans are worthy of the right to life, and the other side does not see it that way.
