Cyndi Lauper Says Her 'Incredible' Late Mother Catrine 'Inspired' Her to Launch an Abortion Fund

Almost 40 years since her iconic debut single "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" was released, Cyndi Lauper is taking her career-long message of women's empowerment to yet another level.

In response to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade earlier this year, the 69-year-old Grammy-winning musician is launching the Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights Fund to support organizations fighting for the right to abortion and reproductive healthcare, PEOPLE can exclusively reveal.

"If you don't have control over your own body, how can you be anything but a second-class citizen? Now, the government has control over your body — not you. What should be a private medical decision between you and your doctor is now a government decision," she explains to PEOPLE. "So, this is a big issue for me."

Created in partnership with the Tides Foundation, Lauper's new organization builds on the poignant slogan — which is printed on a t-shirt released for the fund's launch — that first appeared on protest signs at the inaugural Women's March in Washington, D.C. For the singer and activist, the lyric's continued prominence means her longtime feminist efforts have paid off.

"When most women would say, 'What are you, a feminist?' And people would go, 'Well, I'm really a humanist.' I would say, 'Yeah, I'm a feminist. I burned my training bra,'" says Lauper. "Then in 2017, I saw these young girls with these 'Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights' signs, and I felt like, 'You know what? It was all worth it.' The little ones, they heard me."

During the creation of 1983's She's So Unusual album, Lauper didn't necessarily realize how radical the lyrics of songs like "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" would come across to audiences. "It wasn't political, but in a lot of ways it was, because how dare I say that women should come together and be joyful?" she recalls, noting that her early concert crowds reflected the messages in her music. "When I used to go on tour, I actually saw grandmothers, mothers and daughters — three generations. It just made it worthwhile to me."

According to the musician, witnessing her late mother, Catrine, endure a divorce from her father (when Lauper was 5 and a half years old) as well as a subsequent "mess" of a second marriage and divorce instilled such strong values within her. "I got to see firsthand the inequalities and the dichotomy of what it was like to be a woman in the world," she says. "In a lot of ways, I'm glad I knew at a very young age. I had a very low level for BS."

Prior to Catrine's death at 91 earlier this year following a battle with Alzheimer's and vascular dementia, she appeared alongside Lauper in several of her music videos. While her mother wasn't an actress by trade, Lauper felt she was simply electric on-camera — which is why she asked her to appear in the empowering, Grammy-winning "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" visual after another woman dropped out at the last minute.

"I said, 'Ma, if you do it, it would mean a lot to people because we would be mother and daughter working together, and it would carry a different weight,' and she said that was great," Lauper details. "Everything she did, even though she was inexperienced, there was something wonderful about her on-camera. She just had so much heart."

The pair remained extremely close up until Catrine's death in June, and through their final moments together, Lauper and her siblings remained by her side. "She was in hospice, and we were together. We tried to make it as comfortable as I could for her. We made it like a spa," she says. "She was incredible, and I'm just lucky that I got to have her as my mom because it inspired me to do so many things, including this Girls Just Wanna Have Fundamental Rights Fund."

Alongside the organization's launch, Lauper is releasing a lyric video for the new, acoustic version of "Sally's Pigeons," her 1993 single about a teenager getting pregnant and later dying from a back-alley abortion, for which proceeds will benefit the fund. Revisiting the track following the controversial SCOTUS decision earlier this year brought her back to a time before Roe v. Wade existed.

"['Sally's Pigeons'] was about newspaper headlines — 'Found Another Dead Young Woman.' [There were] lots of dead young women from illegal abortions that were not safe because you couldn't have a safe procedure," she recalls. "Young people don't know what it was like. I saw it every day. I knew how it affected a lot of young women."

Despite the current state of abortion rights, Lauper remains admirably optimistic about the future. "I just really, really believe that in the United States, we can regain the right to choose and, one day, actually attain and secure full equality for women," she says. "That's been my main thing my whole life — wanting to be equal."

Beyond her philanthropic work, Lauper's currently in production on a musical adaptation of the 1998 comedy Working Girl alongside writer Theresa Rebeck, "Time After Time" co-writer Rob Hyman, Kinky Boots collaborator Sammy James Jr., director Christopher Ashley and producers including Robyn Goodman and Kumiko Yoshii.

"We just had our first reading, one of those 29-hour reading things, so it was great to see it up on its feet," she says of the show, which fans can "probably" expect to see onstage in 2024.

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Closer around the corner, however, is the 40th anniversary of She's So Unusual next October. For Lauper, the fact that fans are still discussing the body of work, which also featured the hits "Time After Time" and "She Bop," today is exactly why she created it. "I wanted to make something that would last, that would give people joy and hope," she reminisces — before teasing a potential celebratory string of concerts.

"I might go out on tour one more time — big time — and maybe be the headliner," says Lauper, who's performed both on her own and alongside acts like Rod Stewart, Cher and Blondie over the past decade. "I've had the privilege of working with a lot of wonderful people, but I gotta see. I'd like to [tour for the anniversary]."