27-year-old Angie Jackson decided to use Twitter as a public stage for her private decision to terminate a pregnancy using RU486, the miscarriage-inducing drug legally available in the US for a decade.
Jackson, who has a 4-year-old son with special needs, says that that difficult pregnancy and outcome made her decide long ago not to have another child. She was committed to aborting future pregnancies that might occur.
If this is true, and her decision about ending her child-bearing is solid and responsible, one has to wonder why she didn't just have a tubal ligation. That would have seemed like a logical step and one that would have saved her from the need to go through the discomfort of a faux-miscarriage, while saving the rest of the universe from the anguish of assisting at such a personal and difficult moment.
Jackson allegedly has about 800 followers on the social website Twitter. In a CNN television interview today, she mentioned a book she's like to have published. If aborting-on-Twitter is her idea of a great way to boost future book sales, this is an even greater abuse of reproductive rights than initially thought.
Those of us who came from generations where women had no legal abortion choices understand how precious the right to choose is. Those of us who drove in the dark of night to deliver or pick up a friend in a back-alley clinic, terrified that that friend hemorrhaging in the back seat of our cars might die on our watch know things that clearly Ms. Jackson cannot fathom.
We put flowers on women's graves, took to the streets, marched, got arrested, lobbied, volunteered our time, held fund-raisers, took abuse from opponents, shouldered death threats, and -- in my case -- got thrown out of the churches of our birth-- so that our daughters and others could have reproductive choices.
We make no apologies: we have no regrets.
But the right we were fighting so hard for-- which was granted only a short 37 years ago-- was based in what the Supreme Court called, "privacy."
We wanted women to be able to make personal decisions about their pregnancies in the privacy of their most intimate circle-- typically by the woman with her partner, family, closest friends, physician and/or religious advisors should she choose. If not, she could decide as a panel of one and discuss it with no one.
Angie Jackson has the right to choose to take RU486 and then write about her cramps, her bleeding to the eventual expelling of the products of conception on the internet.
But many of us who have spent our lives on the front lives of the abortion debate also have the right to hate the fact that she chose to do this.
At its worst, it is self-serving, exhibitionistic, and selfish: at best, it has "Bad Judgment" written all over it.
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Leepin Larry
Out on a limb
Miguela Holt y Roybal
Foolish Monkey
Written by an American
Christine Geery
Salon.com
Comments
this is an excellent article. and i, for one, appreciate all that women of your generation did to end the back-alley butchering of young women. (r)
"Self-serving, exhibitionistic, and selfish." That's Twitter's tag line, isn't it? Twitter is the very medium of narcissism. Good for her for making it about something more substantive than the usual "I like movie stars" tweets.
As for her birth control choices, I read somewhere that she had an IUD. That's supposed to be a pretty reliable form of birth control and a lot less invasive than tubal ligation. If my IUD failed me, I'd probably be running for the morning-after pill too. No judgement.
Here is one of her tweets that I think sums that whole idea up nicely:
"It's amazing how something so common, legal, medical & necessary has been shamed into complete silence."
Her book is a memoir about her experience growing up in a cult and she was writing and blogging and tweeting before the abortion. Since she was already writing about her life I'm sure it seemed natural to her to continue to write about this experience.
If you don't want children (and this woman has every right to not have them), there is the option of a tubal ligation. Or, if you don't want to do something that permanent or can't find a doctor willing to do that, you can, in the word's of Roseanne's television sister Jackie, get "Fort-Knox level security at a bargain-basement price" with the combination of birth control pills, a diaphragm, and a condom.
and don't think for a moment that those against abortion won't use something like this...they live for anything to use as ammunition.
Whilst I don't believe I could document an abortion, haven't we fought for the right for women to have abortion without the threat of death, incarceration or judgment? Whatever her choices, she did what she felt she had to for other women to feel ok about their own choice to do the same - because many of them don't - regardless of the progress we have made.
I am glad that I was able to have it done in privacy and without fear of recrimination, and I am grateful for the action of women before me that made that possible. Yet, I wish I didn't have to hide my decision. I wish that women could feel free to talk with each other about this very common procedure and not have to be afraid of condemnation. So, I applaud Angie Jackson for her bravery, whether it was self-promoting or not. Bringing something into the light is the way to defeat shame.
An IUD has more side-effects than a tubal ligation, in my experience. My tubal had none and was one of the the best things I ever did for myself. (At age 30 after child #3 - on the delivery table, actually, with only an epidural for anesthetic. And #3 was [is] the abortion I didn't have, the result, in part, of the inability to have a tubal after #2 at age 23, not because the doctor refused but because he didn't think he could get permission from the hospital to perform the procedure. This was in 1972.)
There isn't a flat, universal rule about these things, it varies from place to place and hospital to hospital.
"Oops I did it again,
it's time for another pill,
I'm just so stupid,baabaay!"
She just gave the right to life groups another big pile of stones to throw at Roe vs Wade. She can't use the Fort Knox plan like Leeandra mentioned? How about the plan B pill? They're cheap, no prescription needed, less side effects. Oh wait, there's less drama, no book deal, no twitter followers. She needs to be banished to an island of dumb women, she makes us all look bad.
rated because Mary Ann is a rebel with a cause!
I'd like to think that if women could speak more openly about their private personal choices, a great deal of the societal shame and guilt some women suffer could be greatly diminished.
And isn't it attention grabbing to blog about how outraged *you* are about another woman's decision? If you really don't like what she's done, don't put her name on the internet, garnering her more hits... Oh wait, if you did that you wouldn't have as many blog hits yourself...I see.
Choice isn't limited to abortion - it covers the full range of a woman's reproductive health choices. So it really bothers me that so many people here feel it their responsibility to "educate" this woman on more appropriate birth control methods. And her tweeting on the procedure might inflame the pro-life protesters, but her choices aren't limited to only those which "further the cause" for other women. She has the right to express her feelings and perspectives on this issue - I may not be comfortable with what she has to say, but I'll always fight for her right to say it. Because I wouldn't want someone telling me what birth control to use, what to say, and whether or not to carry a child - isn't that the whole point of the pro-choice movement?
Wish I could rate u, JustJuli & Toby Jarman!
First thanks for taking the time to read my recent post.
It's hard to answer every comment personally, but to some of you I would like to clarify a few things:
1) The post is clear that she had a right to go on Twitter and I respect that 1st amencment right
2) It is also clear that observers also have the right not to like the fact that she chose to do this
3) As far as the last comment about the use of caps in the title...I often use all caps in my blog titles...this is simply a font choice.
Blogs are the public square debates of 2010 and I appreciate the healthy exchange of views here. ..pro and con.
Mainly, I appreciate all of you taking the time to read , rate and evaluate what I wrote -- so thanks again.
I applaud her bravery. She knew about Dr. Tiller and still chose to put a human face on abortion. People naively (stupidly) seem to think that this is a non-issue because Roe V. Wade hasn't been overturned except..... it HAS been overturned in every possible way except in name. Unless you missed it, women in this country are still having back-alley abortions because they don't have access to safe and legal abortions. Iowa and Utah are enacting legislation to arrest women who deliberately miscarry - and a woman in Iowa spent a couple of days in jail because the police thought she deliberately fell down some stairs in order to induce a miscarriage (she didn't miscarry and charges were later dropped). Welcome to the United States, where potential life has more value than a woman's life and where "pro-life" also means pro-war, pro-death penalty and anti-nationalized health insurance or school lunch programs.
Wish I could rate JustJuli.
pad md
Why does a woman have an abortion? Why does a woman have a baby? Without asking these questions we cannot understand the situation. This twitter should shed some needed light on the subject.
It is the public invitation to have the universe (through the internet) witness your "abortion" on a monitor screen that makes some people queasy AND, more importantly, fearful that such a display and the resulting controversy, harms the very cause you claim to want to support. Thanks again for all the reads, thoughtful reactions and rates.
I personally feel that Angie Jackson tweeting about her abortion is a good thing because it lets people know that women still need access to abortion for a variety of reasons, not just for "acceptable" reasons like incest or rape.
Your post reminds me of the women I speak to who say they are find with a woman's first abortion, but not her second or beyond. Well, it's fine to have that opinion, but it's not fine for them to enforce that on others.
What is truly hurting the abortion rights movement at the moment is what's happening with Health Care Reform, clinics that are closing due to lack of funding, teens who are still receiving abstinence-only education. Why not focus your ire on those people who are actively trying to prevent a woman's right to choose rather than on a woman who is exercising her right?
I was 25 (married to law student, working full time and going to night school) and accidentally became pregnant. We were using the spermicide.
At my place of work I was exposed to german measles. German measles is known as a dangerous disease to be exposed to because it causes birth defects. Back then you couldn't go and have a look at how the baby was developing.
I decided to do some research on my own
and made the decision to have an abortion.
During the 60s one had to go before a board of three physicians in order to get the permission to proceed with the abortion. I was denied. My ob/gyn was on the board. How is that for irony?
I miscarried at the end of the fourth month. The fetus was very deformed. It was a very painful thing to experience (I mean pain) and left me very ill. The doctor then did a D&C which was even more painful.
My ob/gyn was not the most supportive in the experience. I'll never forget the shame that he manipulated me into experiencing. Sometimes shame and guilt becomes an integral part of having an abortion. My mother even got on the bandwagon with him.
I was outraged that this "healer" treated me as he did.
I soon quit going to him and found a much younger and more progressive doctor that I ended using for the birth of both my daughters when I became pregnant again.
About 6 years later I was asked to serve on the board of directors of Planned Parenthood in Oklahoma City. I served 5 years. I was fortunate to be able to be taken under the wing of an older gentleman who helped young women go to Kansas to get an abortion. I soon joined in his efforts and he paid and I drove.
While on the board, I volunteered one day at week at the Packing Town Clinic. The education that I received there was life changing. I got to see women who were very poor and at times were careless with using their birth control. We had one woman who had 10 children before she started using PP and our doctor put her on the pill. She became pregnant. Dr. S was very surprised and he asked her how she could have gotten pregnant. She told us that the pill had made her so sick that she ground it up every morning and put it in her husband's coffee!The dear lady didn't understand when she was given the script that it only worked on females. Her husband certainly had some interesting side effects while he was "taking" the pill.
We worked to hard to educate the women that came in but when push came to shove if someone did become pregnant and wanted to terminate the pregnancy, we always helped. Remember this was in the 1960s and early 70s.
I think that what the young woman did is a private choice and truthfully, I don't think we have the right to be "livid" about what she shared with her Twitter group.
Abortion has been a "secret" process for far too long. Maybe I would not share it with people on the internet but we don't know who she may have helped by being forthright and open about her choice. I am sorry that some feel that she was "grandstanding" and seeking publicity.
Until we walk a mile or two in her shoes, who are we to be so critical?
Thanks.