Most of us have seen our parents or grandparents shake their heads and say, “What’s the world coming to?”
The more I read about pro-choice advocates, the more I am unnerved by the direction the world is careening toward.
Recently I came across a blog of nauseating content. Activist Jessica DelBalzo takes “pro-choice” to an entirely different level of passionate support. It is no longer enough to just “grant abortion” or to allow it to exist as a necessary evil, but now DelBalzo insists that women must fully embrace abortion, and joyfully celebrate what it is.
She titles her blog post “I Love Abortion: Implying Otherwise Accomplishes Nothing for Women’s Rights.” Unable to understand why people half-heartedly rally behind abortion, she writes that saying abortion should be rare “implies a value judgement, promoting the idea that abortion is somehow distasteful or immoral and should be avoided.”
You hit the nail on the head, Honey.
DelBalzo testifies from her own experience the joy and liberation she felt in her abortion. She writes that she will encourage her children to regard abortion in a welcoming and positive light. DelBalzo condemns America as being filled with anti-feminism and with religious conservatism that shames women’s sexuality, and insists that abortion will always be not only normal, but also a perfectly acceptable and reasonable choice for women. Finally, DelBalzo concludes that “women who value their freedom should be proud to say that they like abortion. In fact, they should venerate it whole-heartedly. Abortion is our last refuge, the one final, definitive instrument that secures our bodily autonomy. What’s not to love?”
Yikes.
So. Love abortion, in the name of celebrating women’s rights?
I find it contradictory that when one does this, there is zero consideration for the emotional scarring and physical risk and danger a woman goes through during an abortion.
The BBC recently highlighted a study performed by the University of Oslo, which observed the psychological ramifications of women who had abortions. Norway, a country in which 20% of pregnancies result in abortion, gathered a testing pool of 40 women who had had a miscarriage, compared with 80 who chose to have an abortion.
The team at Oslo found that “after 10 days, 47.5% of women who had miscarried suffered from some degree of mental distress compared with 30% of the abortion group. The proportion of women who had a miscarriage suffering distress decreased during the study period, to 22.5% at six months and to just 2.6% at two years and five years.” The initial “relief” of women who’d had abortions resulted in less of a psychological strain than those who had lost their baby due to natural causes.
However, the Oslo study found, upon continued observation, that “among the abortion group 25.7% were still experiencing distress after six months, and 20% at five years.” The long-standing psychological scarring stayed relatively high, sustained over several years.
Such statistics give strong evidence for the psychologically harmful effects for a woman who has had an abortion. If the results of this study come from a country where abortions are more socially acceptable, and certainly more common, imagine the increased sense of guilt and distress for women in the USA, where there is a prominent pro-life presence.
Because of the current social climate, it is very likely therefore, that American women would struggle even more intensely with remorse, anxiety and depression. A true feminist would have all of a women’s wellness at the heart of her concern. But DelBalzo’s position entirely disregards a woman’s psychological well-being in a thoroughly marring process. Let’s not even mention how “loving abortion” also readily discounts the value of unborn female (and male) babies’ lives. How does that accomplish anything for human rights?
What is the world coming to…when convenience and sexual “liberation” dictate morality?
Last week I rocked a 9-week-old baby to sleep, and I thought about how a little more than 2 months before, it would have been completely permissible in some places to kill this child in a partial-birth abortion. That sickened me. That perfect little soul asleep in my arms would have been helpless against such violence. All in the name of convenience, and celebrating women’s rights.
Murder. What’s not to love?
