Source: FilmMagic
The music industry is home to the most talented individuals that have ever graced the limelight, but despite all of the good that it has brought to our society, the industry is also full of major controversies, becoming a hotbed of some of the most heinous acts imaginable done to the world’s most famous people. International superstar Britney Spears is no exception to this, as she has been facing conservatorship issues since 2008.
This issue has been massively exacerbated to the point of completely restricting the international pop star’s freedom as a human being. This is why social media has been buzzing with #FreeBritney from the moment the news publicly got out. It is an unbelievably tragic situation, and millions of people have expressed their support for Britney throughout the entire ordeal.
On June 23, 2021, Britney Spears had yet another conservatorship hearing where she addressed multiple things in court and spoke about the way her years-long conservatorship has negatively affected her life. The most excruciating detail, however, involved conversations about reproductive and disability rights.
Straight out of Britney’s mouth, she uttered the words, “I want to be able to get married and have a baby. I was told right now in the conservatorship. I’m not able to get married or have a baby. I have an IUD inside of me right now, so I don’t get pregnant.” Her words struck a chord all over social media, becoming the number one trending topic worldwide with more than 1 million tweets about the international pop star’s horrific experience.
Much of the conversation centered on the issue of the IUD, which has long been a controversial matter according to experts worldwide. “I wanted to take the IUD out, so I can start trying to have another baby, but this so-called team won’t let me go to the doctor to take it out because they don’t want me to have any more children,” exclaimed Britney.
Conversations about the reproductive rights of people under conservatorships, such as Britney Spears’s, raise questions about when and how these setups can work for someone with a disability. Sadly, a person under a conservatorship has “fewer rights than someone who is in prison,” said Judy Mark, president of Disability Voices United.
This is further proven by Britney’s harsh situation as she can’t even make the most basic choices in her life, like who she wants to spend her time with, where she wants to live, or who they can have a relationship with. Spears’s conservatorship started in 2008 after she suffered a very public mental breakdown in 2007.
She has spoken out against her father, Jamie Spears, who has been part of managing the conservatorship from the very beginning. In 2020, Britney told a judge via her lawyer that “she is afraid of her father,” something a daughter should never utter under any circumstance.
Britney’s situation is a drastically negative extreme, yet she should not just be treated as a mere example. She is a living, breathing human being who has been robbed of her rights and privileges for way too long. She deserves absolute freedom, and she is entitled to do everything she wants with herself and her own body. #FreeBritney should be a notion plastered all over the world without question, for no one deserves this kind of inhumane treatment.
