Lady Gaga kicked off the U.S. leg of her Chromatica Ball Tour this week with some pointed messages for lawmakers.
The pop icon paused her Monday night concert at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., to express her support for abortion rights following the Supreme Court’s June overturn of Roe v. Wade.
Shortly before launching into a piano-driven performance of her 2011 smash, “Edge of Glory,” Gaga told the crowd that she hoped “to dedicate this song to every woman in America” who “now has to worry about her body if she gets pregnant.”
A video of Gaga on stage at the D.C. show sharing her thoughts on abortion rights was widely circulated on social media.
“I pray that this country will speak up, that we will stick together,” she said, as seen in the clip. “We will not stop until it’s right!”
The 13-time Grammy winner, however, didn’t stop there.
“What about all the women who are raped?” she asked the audience moments later. “What about all the women that are dying giving childbirth?”
She went on to explain why she took a moment to address these issues during her performance.
“I didn’t mean to be like a downer,” she continued. “But there’s some shit that’s more important than show business.”
The Supreme Court’s ultraconservative rulings on abortion and gun control as of late have sparked justifiable fears among many Americans that LGBTQ rights, including same-sex marriage, could soon be rolled back at the federal level.
Such concerns prompted Gaga, a longtime LGBTQ rights advocate, to use a portion of her set to share her thoughts on the prospect of the Supreme Court reconsidering its stance on marriage equality.
Kevin Mazur via Getty Images
“This might not be the national anthem, but it’s our national anthem,” she reportedly declared before segueing into 2011’s “Born This Way,” a track long embraced as a rallying cry for the LGBTQ community. “They better not try to mess with gay marriage in this country!”
Gaga launched the pandemic-delayed Chromatica Ball Tour before a sold-out crowd in Düsseldorf, Germany, last month. She will return to the concert stage Wednesday with a performance at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, before hitting San Francisco and Los Angeles, among other cities.
