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Cyndi Lauper's late mother has inspired her to launch an abortion fund.
The ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun' singer has set up the Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights Fund to support organisations fighting for abortion and reproductive healthcare in the wake of the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, which previously protected women's rights to an abortion, in June this year.
Cyndi said: “If you don't have control over your own body, how can you be anything but a second-class citizen?
“Now, the government has control over your body – not you.
“What should be a private medical decision between you and your doctor is now a government decision. So, this is a big issue for me.”
Cyndi's mother Catrine – who appeared in a number of her music videos, including for song ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun' – died aged 91 earlier this year following a battle with Alzheimer's and vascular dementia.
The singer said: “She was in hospice, and we were together. We tried to make it as comfortable as I could for her. We made it like a spa,” she says. “She was incredible, and I'm just lucky that I got to have her as my mom because it inspired me to do so many things, including this Girls Just Wanna Have Fundamental Rights Fund.”
Cyndi has also dropped a lyric video for her 1993 abortion rights song ‘Sally's Pigeons', which she recently re-released as an acoustic version.
She told PEOPLE: [‘Sally's Pigeons'] was about newspaper headlines – ‘Found Another Dead Young Woman.'
“[There were] lots of dead young women from illegal abortions that were not safe because you couldn't have a safe procedure.
“Young people don't know what it was like. I saw it every day. I knew how it affected a lot of young women.”
Cyndi shared a new version of the track in late June, and she said at the time: “The Supreme Court's radical decision makes the re-recording and re-release of ‘Sally's Pigeons' more relevant than ever.
“In my childhood, women didn't have reproductive freedom and 50 years later we find ourselves in a time warp where one's freedom to control their own body has been stripped away.”
