Click on nearly any article that pops up in a Google search for “Bettina diFiore” and you’ll know instantly where this prolific journalist stands in the abortion debate.

In fact, you really don’t need to look further than this description from the Twitter profile of the Southern California writer and researcher: pro-life from womb to tomb.

But while that phrase describes the breadth of her understanding of when life begins and ends, that’s not an accurate description of her own life’s trajectory.

DiFiore, staff writer and researcher for California-based, prolife advocacy group Live Action, was visiting Kingfisher County last week and agreed to talk with the Times & Free Press Wednesday about the personal events that shaped her ardently pro-life perspective.

DiFiore was spending 10 days at the rural Dover home of KT&FP staffer Jeremy Ingle and his wife Monica. She is godmother to Zita, who will be 6 next week, the third youngest of the Ingles’ six children.

A Child of Chaos The product of a chaotic household – with an absentee father and crack-addicted mother – diFiore had her first abortion at age 16.

Living in Oklahoma at the time as a ward of the court, diFiore went to Dallas for the procedure, with the guidance and encouragement of Planned Parenthood.

“The woman at Planned Parenthood basically told me how to break the law,” she said. “Think about it – an out-of-state minor shows up to have a medical procedure and no one asks any questions? That’s a broken system.”

DiFiore said even in the midst of her desperate situation, “I wanted that baby so much.”

But with only her mother’s example of how to parent, no means to support herself or her child, a boyfriend insisting on an abortion and “every single other person I confided in assuming I would get one, diFiore said she “bought the lie” that aborting her baby was a humane decision.

“The night before, I talked to my baby and said I’ll be a terrible mother, I’ll do to you what my mother did to me,” she said.

“I thought it would be a solution, but instead it created a lifelong wound.”

The Downward Spiral

After the abortion, diFiore’s life spiraled into a never-ending cycle of depression, drinking and drugs. Instead of ending her toxic relationship with her boyfriend, she married him.

Three years later, she was two months into her second pregnancy before she realized she was carrying another baby.

Even though they were married this time, her husband again insisted on abortion.

“This time it was my own lifestyle choices that made me fearful for my baby,” she said. “All I could think was that any child simmering in the cesspool of my womb was going to be born horribly deformed.”

The second time around, di-Fiore found herself lying on a table, surrounded by photos on all four walls and even the ceiling of healthy babies the doctor had delivered in her practice as an OB-GYN.

“When I saw all those faces, I said ‘Stop! I want to keep my baby,’ but she said it was too late,” she said.

“That time, the procedure was excruciatingly painful as well as horribly traumatic,” she said.

“I’m pretty sure they sterilized me inadvertently. It was an absolute nightmare.”

But even in the midst of her physical pain and heavy burden of guilt and regret, diFiore threw herself into pro-choice activism.

“I kept telling myself it was the wrong choice for me but it might still be the right choice for someone else,” she said.

Divorced and working a variety of jobs, diFiore attended Mills College in Oakland, Calif., in her early 30s.

The liberal arts women’s college encouraged activism and sent her as a delegate to March for Women’s Life.

“I carried the signs and shouted the pro-abortion slogans, while still feeling that what I had done was wrong,” she said.

Political Shift; Spiritual Awakening

DiFiore voted for Obama his first term, but that’s when her embrace of the philosophies of the left began to loosen, she said.

“In my neighborhood, I could literally see conditions deteriorate under the policies of Obama and our local government officials who shared his progressive philosophy,” she said.

“Obama did such a terrible job that he flipped me and I became a conservative.”

Despite her political shift, diFiore clung tenaciously to her pro-choice position.

“My abortions were mistakes but I didn’t want to take choice away from anyone else,” she said. “That kind of mentality makes no sense.”

But then she was listening to conservative talk radio and heard Mike Huckabee describe a young girl who was charged with homicide after giving birth in a bathroom stall in a bar and allowing her baby to drown in the toilet.

“Mike Huckabee made the point that if she had just gone to Planned Parenthood a couple weeks earlier, she could have had the same result and gotten off scot-free.

“So many people see the moment of birth as this magical butterfly moment when life begins, but really, that baby was already a baby and birth is just a change in location.

“I was never able to wrap my mind around that until Huckabee expressed it in a way that was so obvious I couldn’t deny it.”

Her Christian conversion happened later, beginning with oneon-one theological studies with a Catholic priest followed by baptism.

The same priest urged her to reconcile with her long-estranged father, who had lived a life wracked by his own guilt for abandoning his only child.

Her healing process also led to her current dedication to “making abortion unthinkable,” through researching, writing and advocacy, as well as reaching out to women in crisis pregnancies.

“I was closeted about telling my story until 2017, but God had been putting that on my heart from the beginning.

“One night I felt that same undeniable urge that drove me to church for the first time – that if I didn’t do it, I would literally die.

“I wrote my story and it went viral and was shocked by judgment I didn’t get. Instead I got support and love and kindness.

“I told myself if it saves one woman or girl from what I’ve been through, it will be worth it and it has been so worth it.

“It’s completely changed the course of my life and opened so many doors.”