From beyond the grave, Michael Jackson has let the world know that he was against abortion. The sort-of-revelation comes courtesy of the previously unreleased song “Song Groove (Abortion Papers),” which was released this week as part of the 25th anniversary remaster of Bad.
While he may have been progressive in the ways of plastic surgery, Jackson expressed some fairly conservative viewpoints in song before, taking somewhat-moralistic stances against things like slut-shaming (“Dirty Diana”) and stalking (“Smooth Criminal”). Those Jackson taboos are now joined by this pretty raw and uncomfortable song whose message—“Those abortion papers / Signed in your name against the words of God / Those abortion papers / Think about life—is unmistakably straightforward.