A Surprising Pro-Life Message From Eminem

This powerful song is a shocking and unexpected answer to all of Hollywood’s shameful lobbying for the murder of unborn children.

Eminem raps during the Concert for Valor in Washington, D.C., Nov. 11, 2014.
Eminem raps during the Concert for Valor in Washington, D.C., Nov. 11, 2014. (photo: DoD News photo by EJ Hersom, CC BY-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

The year 2017 was another year when Hollywood overwhelmingly praised abortion, with one actress even calling her first abortion her best one yet.

But the words to a new rap song are heartbreakingly real in detailing the pain and regret of abortion.

Rapper Eminem's new album, Revival, has a single, “River,” that's been mostly ignored by music reviewers. Yet it's the riveting confession of an affair, an abortion and the tide of emotions that followed.

The lyrics are a plea for forgiveness for the wrong done to the aborted baby (the “little one” mentioned in the refrain) and the mother. The father now realizes how he left the baby out of his selfish pressuring of the mother to abort.

The song, whether fictional or autobiographical, tell a painful but not uncommon story. Eminem admits to being a serial cheater, “a sex addict,” who began an affair with a woman, “Suzanne.” After a one-night stand, he wanted to move on. She was left feeling "deserted and used," and then found out she was pregnant.

Panicking, the rapper pushed for an abortion. He sings, “We can’t bring her in this world, shoulda knew/To use protection.” He doesn't call the unborn baby a fetus in his brutal honesty: “I made you terminate my baby.” 

After pressuring the mother to abort their child, Eminem says he felt “the person who I’m turning into’s/Irreversible.” The father now realizes he didn't consider the baby in selfishly wanting to get rid of the child. He confessed to taking advantage of the woman and urging her to abort. He said that when he got “on my soapbox and preach, my sermon and speech,” his mistake was like “detergent and bleach is burnin’ the wound.”

This courageous father takes full responsibility and doesn't downplay the full impact of what he's done. He imagines his child might have been a daughter, and that he really would have loved her smile.” But he knew what he did: “what’s one more lie/to tell an unborn child.” The refrain emphasizes his need for forgiveness: “All my sins need holy water, feel it washing over me.”

The message of the song has been glossed over by the media. Instead of looking at this countercultural story, entertainment magazines are talking about the other songs on the album, such as those with racial or Trump themes. The music magazine Rolling Stone only mentioned the song, “River” for its “superstar cameo” in Ed Sheeran, who sings the refrain. Billboard magazine wrote an analysis of the song, but buried the abortion story in the 13th paragraph, stating: “He finishes off the record admitting an abortion through his shrewd wordplay, weighing a love triangle against a rectangle — incorporating his mistress into the equation with the future child and the baby’s mother.”

But the baby wasn't just a “future child.” This powerful song acknowledges the baby already was a child, and is a shocking and unexpected answer to all of Hollywood’s shameful lobbying for the murder of unborn children.