However, this book selection not unique to Boston.
Further investigation found that the book is available at public libraries in other cities across the country, including in New York, New York; Bellevue, Washington; and Dayton, Ohio.
The New York Public Library system has 207 locations in a city of more than eight million people. Of those 207 libraries, 21 have copies of this book; the book is in the children’s non-fiction section of each of those libraries, according to the library’s web site.
Out on the West Coast, it’s also available: in King County, Washington. Although Seattle is in King County, the city maintains its own public library system; Seattle’s library doesn’t carry the book. Rather, the book is available in the King County Library System in Bellevue, Federal Way, and Woodinville, according to the county library system’s database. Bellevue (145,000 people) and Federal Way (101,000 people) each have populations exceeding 100,000 people while Woodinsville has about 13,500 people. The book is in three of the 50 libraries in the county’s system.
In Ohio, the Dayton Metro Library system has a copy of the book at its Dayton location, according to the library web site; it’s one of 19 libraries in the system.
The author and illustrator of the book – Carly Manes and Mar Erazo, respectively – say they wrote it because there are no books about abortion aimed at people under 13 years old in the United States. They also said that they want to make abortion seem normal to children.
“We believe in building a world for kids and adults where abortion is normalized as another outcome of pregnancy, just like miscarriage and birth,” Manes and Erazo wrote on their Kickstarter page last year. “Having this book in the children’s section of libraries next to all of the books about pregnancy is one of the ways we hope to do that.”
Manes’s Twitter bio says that the book is a “gender inclusive and medically accurate picture book about abortion care for little ones 8+.” By that, she means she thinks the book is appropriate for eight-year-olds.
The book tells children over the span of three pages: “Some people have abortions because they can’t take care of a new baby right now. Some people have abortions because their doctors say pregnancy could make them sick. No matter the reason, everyone should be able to make this decision for themselves.”
The book also tells children that having an abortion can make someone feel happy.
“People have many different feelings before, during, and after their abortion,” the book says. “Some people want to talk about it, and some people don’t. Some people feel happy or calm. Some people feel sad or lonely. Many people feel all of these things at the same time.”
So how does the book describe abortion?
“An abortion is when someone decides to stop growing their pregnancy,” the book says. “There are many different ways that people who are pregnant can have an abortion.
“Some people see a doctor who does a special procedure to remove the pregnancy from inside a person’s body,” it states. “Other people take medicine to stop the pregnancy from growing bigger.”
Massachusetts Citizens for Life executive director Patricia Stewart and Massachusetts Family Institute communications director Mary Ellen Siegler don’t think the book is appropriate for children.
Siegler told NewBostonPost in an email message that she takes issue with a book trying to normalize violence against the unborn.
“This book is aimed directly at the hearts and minds of our youth,” Siegler wrote. “It is an attempt to normalize the violent killing of vulnerable unborn babies to children. With the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade at the United States Supreme Court, abortion activists know views regarding abortion are changing. The future is looking very pro-life. Why else would pro-abortion activists produce a book targeting children?”
Stewart told NewBostonPost that it’s wrong to misinform children about abortion to try to get them to support it.
“Preteen children do not need to know about abortion, unless the goal is to begin programming them into dispassionate acceptance of the brutal practice that kills an unborn child,” Stewart said by email. “It falls to those, who love a child, to reject such tactics and safeguard the fragile, fleeting gift of childhood innocence that the apostles of death behind this book aim to pervert.”
Spokesmen for the Boston, New York, King County, and Dayton public libraries could not be reached for comment on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday.
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(Courtesy of Wikimedia) 
