"Your Heart Also Matters"

This week, I just want to say how grateful I am to Amanda Palmer for making what I consider the best abortion song of all time, “Voicemail to Jill.” It’s from her 2019 album “There Will Be No Intermission,” an album the LA Times summarizes as “an unconventional album about a series of personal tragedies — rape, miscarriage and the death of a close friend among them.”

According to a 2019 LA Times article by Jennifer Swann, Palmer has relied on fans who pay through Patreon to support her work—more than 15,000 monthly supporters—and so doesn’t have to promote herself outside that. It wasn’t money that motivated her to make the album and go on tour. “But the state of the union,” Palmer says, “seems to insist upon it.”

“Now all I care about is expanding the conversation about abortion, because I think the country is in trouble,” she says. “Every journalist and everybody out there should be trying to help.”

Here’s the song with a great, and, for me, very moving video.

And here are the lyrics:

Jill it's Amanda just waving
From London
I know that you're
Going tomorrow,
The hardest decision

And I've been on this side
Of the phone for a month
And I know you're in hell and
You know that I know what you're feeling

Life's such a bitch, isn't it?
When you have a baby,
They throw you a party
And then when you die
They get together for a cry

But

no one's gonna
Celebrate you
No one's gonna bring
You cake
And no one's gonna
Shower you with flowers

The doctor won't
Congratulate you
No one on that
Pavement's gonna
Shout at you that
Your heart also matters

I'm not sure that you'll
Get this in time
I don't know if you're
Checking your voicemail at all
But in case it's the morning

And you're off at the green line
And walking through Copley
I want you to stop for a second,
I want you to listen

You don't need to offer
The right explanation
You don't need to beg for
Redemption or ask for forgiveness

And you don't need a
Courtroom inside of your head
Where you're acting as judge
And accused and defendant and witness

It's a strange grief but it's grief

Look at all the women in the street

You know the statistics, Jill

Even though they may not help

Isn't it amazing

How we can never tell

Who

is in an identical hell

No one's gonna celebrate you
No one's gonna bring you cake
And no one's gonna
Shower you with flowers

The doctor won't congratulate you
No one on that pavement's gonna
Shout at you that your heart also matters

No one's gonna compliment you
No one's gonna nod their head
And wink in league with
What you are pursuing

No one's gonna tie surprise balloons
Onto your desk at work
And no one's gonna
Ask you how you're doing

But I'll be back in
Boston by next Thursday
Why don't I come over?

I can bring some friends
If you want us to come
We can bring you cake
And we can bring you flowers

We can bring you wine
And we can talk for hours

Ukulele by request

We'll throw you the best

Abortion

shower