Tragic Details About Cyndi Lauper

With the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, Rolling Stone says that Cyndi Lauper released a new acoustic version of her song "Sally's Pigeons." It's a heartbreaking look at the reality faced by countless women, including a friend of Lauper's. She wrote the song based on a girl she knew as a teenager, who died after a botched, back-alley abortion.

In her book, "A Memoir," Lauper shared her own abortion story. She had been just starting out in her music career, a struggling artist at a time when the clubs she sang at rarely paid. Feeling incredibly sick and unable to afford medical care, she went to a clinic where a med student examined her, told her she was pregnant, and added that he could give her some medication to make her feel better — as long as she didn't want the baby, because of the likelihood of birth defects.

Lauper took the medicine, and went on to have an abortion. She shared her heartbreak: "Afterward I bled a lot, and cried a lot, because I couldn't believe what happened. ... And I wanted it, even though with the medicine I had taken, the baby might have been deformed. ... I used to cry for a long, long time, onto a pillow that became tear-stained. ... Even when I was famous, I felt the need to hold on to that pillow."