The incident saw Sinead O’Connor banned from SNL and fall out of favour with the American public.
“The 10 years after that Saturday Night Live performance, the way that I was dealt with was shocking,” she told EW in 2021. “It was the fashion to treat me bad, whether you were in my bed, at a board meeting, a TV show, a gig, or a party. Everybody treated me like I was a crazy b**** beacause I ripped up the Pope’s picture. We know I’m a crazy b****, but that’s not why.”
At the time, O’Connor was an anomaly: A female musician standing up for what she believed in and what she felt was right.
An advocate for women’s reproductive rights
Nearly 30 years before abortion was legalised in Ireland, O’Connor marched with abortion-rights protestors in Dublin calling for a change in Irish law.
“If you’re going to admit that a girl who’d been raped should be allowed to leave the country for having an abortion, then why not come right out and admit that she should be allowed to have it here?” she questioned at the time.
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O’Connor herself spoke of her abortion in 1991, and said it inspired her song “My Special Child” off of her 1990 album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.
“I was left with the decision of whether or not to have the child, knowing that the father wasn’t going to be around. I decided that it was better not to and that I would have a child at a later stage when his father would be around and involved. I didn’t feel that I could handle it by myself,” she told Spin magazine at the time.
“The whole issue is pro-choice. I wouldn’t lobby for or against abortion, but I would lobby very strongly for the right of women to have control over their own bodies and make decisions for themselves. Nobody has the right to tell anyone else what to think or believe.”
Right on, Sinead. Rest in Power.