Jessica DelBalzo Hearts Abortion, Discussed It With Her Two Year-old Child, and Thinks Every Mom Should

When the press wants to smear a conservative outfit, it embarks on a mission to find and highlight someone, no matter how peripheral their involvement or unreflective of that group's beliefs, to portray as somehow typical of their mindset. But when someone who is clearly a long-time activist in the "pro-choice" movement clearly betrays the truth -- that the movement really is pro-abortion without limits -- they're nowhere to be found.

I expect that to be the case with Jessica DelBalzo's latest item ("I Love Abortion") filed at RH Reality Check, and not merely because the press is so predictable. It's because the press ignored an arguably more outrageous commentary Ms. DelBalzo filed at the same site in August, where she proudly told readers that she had discussed abortion and with her two year-old child, and that all "pro-choice" mothers of toddlers who successfully escaped the womb should do the same thing -- before the "forced-birth bullies" have a chance to exert their awful influence.

DelBalzo "is an activist writer from Flemington, NJ" whose work has appeared at many other sites. RH Reality Check "is an online community and publication serving individuals and organizations committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights." In terms of influence and visibility, the organization is far from irrelevant: "We enjoyed the support of the UN Foundation and the editorial independence entrusted to us for six years, from 2006-2012. In January 2012 we branched off officially as our own independent 501 c3 (non-profit) organization, and that's what we are today." The UN Foundation is the outfit created as a result of Ted Turner's billion-dollar grant to the organization in the 1998.

DelBalzo's "I Love Abortion: Implying Otherwise Accomplishes Nothing for Women's Rights" appeared on Wednesday. Its odious assertions have been noted at LifeNews.com, Hot Air, and elsewhere. Here are several paragraphs (italics are in original):

I love abortion. I don't accept it. I don't view it as a necessary evil. I embrace it. I donate to abortion funds. I write about how important it is to make sure that every woman has access to safe, legal abortion services. I have bumper stickers and buttons and t-shirts proclaiming my support for reproductive freedom. I love abortion.

And I bristle every time a fellow activist uses a trendy catch-phrase or rallying cry meant to placate pro-lifers. The first of these, “Make abortion safe, legal, and rare!” has been used for decades as a call for abortion rights.

Safe and legal are concepts I fully support, but rare is something I cannot abide.

... there is no need to suggest that abortion be rare. To say so implies a value judgement, promoting the idea that abortion is somehow distasteful or immoral and should be avoided.

... we must remember that extenuating circumstances like health, contraceptive failure, and rape mean that abortion will always be a normal, necessary, and reasonable choice for many women. As such, we must avoid stigmatizing it in any way. No woman benefits from even the vaguest insinuation that abortion is an immoral or objectionable option. That's the weak argument made by misogynistic, forced-birth advocates, and it has no place in a dialogue about reproductive freedom. Terminating a pregnancy is not an unethical act, yet suggesting that abortion should be rare implies that there is something undesirable about having one.

I suspect that the author's viewpoint is far from atypical. It is reasonable to believe that there are quite a few pro-aborts who bristle at the "safe, legal, and rare" slogan which I believe Bill Clinton was among the first to employ shortly after he became president, and that those who are so bothered reside at the highest levels of the movement. But the press won't attempt to surface those views, lest they reveal pro-aborts' true agenda and cause Americans whose pro-choice viewpoint is based more in political correctness than rigorous analysis to rethink their position.

DelBalzo personalized her own position in her August 19, 2011 column ("Why I Talk to My Kids About Abortion... and Why You Should Talk to Yours"; note that it was written while the UN Foundation was till in charge), which provided advice how to tell your toddler about abortion and the heartless meanies who want to prevent them (bolds are mine):

My daughter was 2 years old the first time we talked about abortion. While this might seem shocking to some, it was a part of a very conscious decision on my part to raise my children with pro-choice values. Starting young seemed like the best approach, and the opportunities for discussion came early and often.

It was election season 2004, and every day, my daughter joined me at work where I ran a small store that carried a large selection of punk clothing, hair dye, political t-shirts, and bumper stickers. Some of my customers were students at the local middle school, but many were parents, teenagers, and others who came in to browse and stayed to talk about politics once they saw our vast selection of pro-choice, anti-war, Bush-bashing liberal gear. Often, the conversation turned toward politics, and it wasn't long before my little girl was asking me, “Mama, why do you say you're scared of Bush?”

Though I explained many reasons to her that day and in the days that followed, his stance on abortion was a critical one that bore repeating time and again. In simple terms, I told her: “When a woman gets pregnant, she can either stay pregnant and have a baby, or she can go to a doctor and have him or her get rid of the fetus so that she doesn't have a baby. That's called abortion, and our president wants to stop women from having that choice. He wants to force women who get pregnant to have babies even if they don't want them.” She was used to hearing accurate pregnancy-related terminology, and she was about as disgusted by the anti-choice position as you could ever expect a pre-schooler to be.

As my daughter has grown older, our discussions about abortion rights have continued to evolve, catching her younger brother up on the subject and adding in more information about the actual procedure and the opposition, always with an emphasis on just how important it is for women to have the ability to control what goes on within their own bodies. Even young children can understand that concept; your body is your property and no one else should have a say over what happens to it.

... It should go without saying that mothers and fathers who believe in reproductive freedom should want their children to share those beliefs. Perish the thought that otherwise, our babies will become the next generation of forced-birth bullies!

... Anti-choicers will argue that young children are horrified at the thought of abortion, but that has never been my experience nor the experience of any other pro-choice parents I know. Instead, kids who learn about abortion in a straight-forward, fact-based manner tend to accept it completely. There isn't anything frightening about terminating a pregnancy, but even a child can comprehend the atrocity in forced gestation.

If the press wasn't interested in this item from Ms. DelBalzo, I'm pretty sure they'll find it pretty to ignore her current "I Heart Abortion" rant. The rest of us shouldn't.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.