American singer-songwriter Charlie Puth, who has openly advocated for abortion, posted a video to Instagram on Tuesday, featuring the heartbeat of the baby Puth and his wife are expecting in March with a musical twist. In the video, Puth rightfully referred to his unborn child as “our baby.”
Puth compared the heart rates at various stages of human development — from in the womb through old age — with styles of music that parallel. For example, the fast heart rate of the baby in utero compares to the tempo of high-energy dance music, which Puth described as “primal and urgent,” matching the energy behind an unborn baby’s rapid and crucial development.
The baby’s heart rate at birth slows, matching the tempo of many lullabies. He compared the pace and feel of music written for adults to an “inhale, exhale,” walking pace, matching the typical range of an adult’s heartbeat, and lastly, the considerably slowed heart rate in old age to slow, classic songs.
“Music is amazing,” Puth said, “and it directly correlates to human life.”
Although Puth has expressed hesitancy about sharing his political views with the world, it hasn’t stopped him. Following the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, Puth posted, “Regardless of anyone’s own personal or religious beliefs, I firmly believe that it is not the government’s role to tell any person what they can or cannot do with their own body — it should continue to be their choice.”
Puth’s recent video, albeit sweet and life-affirming in itself, is not a walk-back of his support for abortion. But it highlights the dissonance of his apparent position, and that of many others, that celebrates a “desired” baby as unique and beautiful, and an “unwanted” baby as merely an extension of a woman’s body that she should be free to embrace or discard.
Nonetheless, Puth’s statements dignifying the life of his own child in the womb, and it seems “human life” across all stages of development, stand out among the celebrity class. Now, a little over a year after their wedding, Puth and his wife’s announcement of their pregnancy — sans surrogate — is another breath of fresh air among celebrities and the uber-wealthy who commodify and manipulate the reproductive process to serve their own self-interested ends.
The video highlights a father’s knowledge that his baby is not just a “clump of cells,” a “potential life,” or, per his comments after the Dobbs ruling, his wife’s “own body.” Regardless of whether he would affirm it outright, Puth’s musical reflections shine on the dignity of human life at all its stages.
Catherine Gripp is a graduate of Arizona Christian University where she earned a degree in communication and a minor in political science. She writes for The Federalist as a reporting intern.
