Parliamentary questions about abortion song by punk band Vulva

punk band Vulva

Parliamentary questions about abortion song by punk band Vulva

MPs from the ChristenUnie and SGP ask the Minister of Health (VWS) inparliamentary questions about the legal options for taking action against theRotterdam punk band Vulva. That band praises the freedom to have an abortion,and the way in which they do that repulses the MPs.

“Are there administrative or legal options to take action against this?” ChrisStoffer of the SGP and Mirjam Bikker of the governing party ChristenUnie askMinister Ernst Kuipers (VSW). They are mainly concerned with the song ‘Killthe Baby’, about abortion. Stoffer and Bikker find the way Vulva expresseshimself “about something as vulnerable as abortion” “downright shocking”.

Read also an interview with Kim Hoorweg: ‘I was driven into the professionway too early’

Consciously rude

The band Vulva organized a mini-festival in the Arminiuskerk in Rotterdam atthe end of August, in honor of the release of their first album, Woe to theWicked. Their music and lyrics are deliberately rude, said Kim Hoorweg of theband earlier in NRC : „It is playing hard and kicking against everything. Wewant to make a subject such as abortion, still in the penal code, open fordiscussion. (…) Find it difficult or ridiculous what we say. I feel thetension you feel now every day.”

‘ Kill the baby / I ‘m not your mommy / just kill the baby / my uterus‘Hoorweg and fellow band member Nadya van Osnabrugge sing in ‘Kill the Baby’.In the music video accompanying the song, a plastic baby doll is set on fire,thrown out of a window, given to a dog to chew and then placed on an electricchair.

“The parliamentary questions show that the right to abortion must be removedfrom the penal code and protected as soon as possible,” says Hoorweg. “You seea relatively small but loud group taking political action and attemptingcensorship. This shows how easily we can end up in a similar situation toAmerica that now seems absurd.”

Anti-abortion protesters

The two band members have also been threatened since their album presentation,and at their concert in the dB’s hall in Utrecht, some anti-abortiondemonstrators handed out flyers and held a prayer circle. According to the_Reformation Newspaper_ __the protesters were pelted with tomatoes, apples anda stone.

It also disturbs the MPs of SGP and ChristenUnie that the AVA organization wasinvolved in the event in the Arminiuskerk. AVA, an initiative of the HumanistAssociation that provides information about contraception and abortion incollaboration with foundations such as Rutgers, FIOM, the Dutch Associationfor Obstetrics and Gynaecology (NVOG) and the Dutch Association of AbortionDoctors (NGvA), was invited by Vulva. The MPs ask the minister whether thismeans that AVA and its partners also support the message of ‘Kill the baby’.

And because Vpro website 3for12 published a piece about Vulva, the two MPsalso want to know whether there are limits for public media to report on”violent and offensive artistic expressions”.