Is nothing personal anymore?
Angie Jackson decided to tweet her way through an abortion and has received quite a bit of press for having done so. Insisting that another pregnancy would have resulted in her death, she chose to tweet to the world as she ingested the RU-486 pill, which induces miscarriage.
Women across the world have been chanting pro-choice slogans like “my body, my choice” for decades now, and I am certainly all for a woman’s right to choose whether to have a baby, however, Jackson’s move crosses a line and makes light of a difficult decision many women face.
It is Jackson’s body and Jackson’s choice. But to use her right to choose to gain publicity for her blog is low. And to top it off, the tweets didn’t even provide any kind of insight into the difficulty of undergoing such an experience. With lines like, “definitely bleeding now,” I have to wonder, who found this to be particularly insightful?
Known in cyberspace as “antitheistangie,” she has received daily press via ABC, CNN, PBS, and various other news networks. Keeping-It-Classy-Angie (my new nickname for her), has successfully been the first woman I know of to use her right to choose to gain five minutes of fame.
Some things are best kept between yourself and friends of your choosing. I call a live play-by-play of your abortion to be one of those things.
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Comments
kendra gilbert
March 9th, 2010 - 11:14:07 AM
So sad. What a gross stunt. Way to make abortion a spectacle, Angie.
1
Drew
March 9th, 2010 - 11:40:38 AM
I followed the entire thing, from before it even started really. To suggest that Angie did it to gain publicity for her blog is grossly ignorant. While it perhaps wasn't the most insightfully presented, what she hoped to accomplish was demystifying the procedure - to send the message that abortion isn't something you have to be ashamed of and hide. Which is exactly the message you are sending. Keep it to yourself, hide it away, pretend it didn't happen. Would the live-tweeting of any other medical procedure garner so much controversy? No. The politics surrounding this debate are very clear here when you read the criticisms on Salon, Newsweek, etc. Essentially, people want the right to choose and also want to keep that right as covered in shadow as possible. Your post here suggests to me that you implicitly approve of this culture of shame surrounding abortion.
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Katie
March 9th, 2010 - 2:46:03 PM
God have mercy on your soul as he embraces your beautiful baby in Heaven.
3
V
March 9th, 2010 - 9:37:55 PM
Drew, your comment here suggests to me that you have never experienced an abortion. While there is a culture of shame, it is more the physical pain, the gore (and with the abortion pill there is a horrorshow of it), and the psychological after-effects that women would like to keep private. And yeah, it definitely looked totally attention-seeking, as does the live tweeting of nearly anything tragic.
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Lilith
March 10th, 2010 - 12:39:29 PM
As opposed to Twirlit riding on Angie Jackson's 5 minutes of fame (that they so don't approve of) to bolster their site's own notice with a dime-store commentary hoping to increase their hit count with link-ins from other sites. Your downplay commentary of what she chose to do is a shallow excuse for sucking on the teet of web trends to improve your exposure.
5