Petrol Girls: Fuel for thought

“I had an abortion!” Those were the words Petrol Girls vocalist Ren Aldridge started yelling when she saw pro-life protesters in front of an abortion clinic in Austria. ​“I had an abortion!” she shouted. ​“And I’m not sorry!” Soon after this encounter, Ren began participating in protests in Graz, Austria, where she now lives. “I thought a lot about that interaction and how it was [a] very serious interaction, and I had this real desire to make it ridiculous and theatrical,” she explains today. Ren talked to Petrol Girls guitarist Joe York about channelling the experience into a song. Originally, the track was supposed to be built around the lyric, ​‘I had an abortion and I’m not sorry,’ before Joe suggested another: ​‘Baby, I had an abortion.’ “For 1...

unsplash-logoLilith Redmoon