Singer Tamika Scott from the band Xscape recently revealed how she was pressured to abort her unborn baby at the height of her career.
A member of the 1990s all-female R&B band, Scott said she became pregnant at the worst possible time for the group, Bravo reports. On their way to stardom, Scott said their management team saw her unborn child as an obstacle to their fame.
“They gave me an ultimatum to stay in the group or have an abortion,” she said during an interview on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen this month.
Scott said her fellow singers were “mad” when she told them her pregnancy news. But her sister, LaTocha Scott, defended Tamika and threatened to leave the group if the managers continued pressuring her to abort her unborn baby.
Scott chose life for her unborn baby, a daughter who she named Ocean.
“I made a choice and I stood for what I believe, and God blessed me,” Tamika Scott said.
Here’s more from the report:
Despite the pushback from management, Tamika managed to rise above the negativity and continue her career. “I still outdanced them,” Tamika joked of her group members.
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Group member Kandi Burruss thinks that the climate for girl groups and pregnancies was different in the ’90s, which caused music industry executives to panic and apply pressure.
“Nowadays,” Kandi said, “people have ‘baby bump alert’ and everybody’s excited, but they weren’t like that in the ’90s.”
As Scott’s story demonstrates, abortion often is not the “choice” or “freedom” that the abortion industry makes it out to be. One study found that as many as 64 percent of post-abortive women say they felt pressure to have an abortion, LifeNews previously reported.
In some cases, the pressure escalated to violence against the mother and unborn child. Elliot Institute Director David Reardon, who co-authored the Medical Science Monitor study, said: “In many of the cases documented for our ‘Forced Abortion in America’ report, police and witnesses reported that acts of violence and murder took place after the woman refused to abort or because the attacker didn’t want the pregnancy.
“Even if a woman isn’t physically threatened, she often faces intense pressure, abandonment, lack of support, or emotional blackmail if she doesn’t abort. While abortion is often described as a ‘choice,’ women who’ve been there tell a very different story,” Reardon said.
Several studies have linked domestic violence to abortion. In these cases, some women were forced or pressured by partners into having abortions, while others believed having an abortion would help them escape abuse.
