Angie Jackson (Angie the Anti-Theist) is blogging and live-tweeting about her abortion.
The reaction has been fairly loud. Even some people who say they support reproductive freedom don’t support a public description of the act. You can follow her on Twitter here, and read more at Jezebel here.
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I am proud of this woman for being so honest about her decision. If more women felt comfortable talking about what they go through in their health decisions, abortion wouldn’t be as demonized as it is.
I think she has loads o’ guts, and I found it interesting from one of the links that she — given that she’s a mother already, married, etc. — might be considered “acceptable” as a women who chooses abortion, as opposed to, say, a teenager.
I struggle with it. I’ve explained how I feel about abortion before, I just can’t look at it as any old procedure. Because of that, I feel like the loss of a potential human is being trivialized. I believe it’s a choice that has to be made between a woman and her doctor but it’s not just any medical procedure. So I’m torn between wanting it to be more acceptable to the public vs maintaining the very serious nature of the decision.
I think I sit right there with you, though I appreciate this woman’s coming forward like this maybe a bit more than you do. When I first read about this, I got this tight feeling in my stomach. I think she’s handling it well. I don’t think everyone who’s responding to her is handling it particularly well, but it’s abortion and sadly, that’s sometimes just par for the course.
I’m all for someone talking about their experience, it’s important for the person and for the rest of us. I think what bothers me is the trendy nature of tweeting it. I can’t help but think of Katie Couric’s colonoscopy. Like it’s the new fun thing! Publicizing our medical procedures! Whee!
Writing about her experience wouldn’t bother me, it’s the nature of the media she chose that just feels yucky to me. But that’s my own personal reaction to it. It’s a feeling response.
I tweeted (or twittered or whatever the heck you call it) for about 2 days to support Iranians and then stopped, so I’m not a fan of the whole concept of tweeting/twittering. I would prefer to hear about her experience all in one essay, for example. On the other hand, maybe that’s me. I’m not a big facebook fan either, but hop on occasionally.
I think Twitter (and I get them confused, too — you tweet on Twitter, or do you twit on Tweeter?) is popular with a lot of people who don’t want or can’t take the time with a whole essay. I signed up for Twitter because my boss told me to, and then I tweeted maybe once, maybe twice. I still get notices that people are following (not many) and I think, “How sad, because I’m leading you nowhere.” For a large group of people, though, Twitter is their main form of social networking. I just have a hard time condensing what I want to say into such a short space.
I do think Twitter has it’s place but I don’t know anyone who uses twitter who isn’t also thoroughly involved in other types of social media. Twitter can be important, as seen with Iran. I love being able to read tweets about things like CPAC, the prop 8 trials, and other important political events that I can’t watch. But those are collective events being collectively tweeted by thousands of people. A blog would have been a more appropriate venue for this kind of thing, I think. Then you link the blog all over twitter and facebook and digg etc…
I think so long as people (she sniffed, like the school marm she’s turned out to be) use Twitter as a springboard and then go and educate themselves about the one-liners they’re seeing, it’s cool. My fear is for people who use the service and then think they’re informed. This is not a plea for everyone to run out and subscribe to their local newspaper (though feel free), but more a plea for people to hit a lot of different mediums in order to make informed choices. The end. End of sermon.
I get that. I would not choose to talk about a medical procedure this way, either.
It isn’t any old procedure. However, when a woman decides its right for her, she’ll need support. Having to be silent about it can be horrible. Silence is a prison…really. She should be able to be open about it without being shamed. At first, I questioned the reason for twittering (tweeting?). After reading this, I changed my mind about this woman. I think I understand why she did this.
She’s an interesting woman – a real survivor. I have tons of respect for her.
Few women take a flip attitude towards this difficult decision. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to decide to terminate a life.
God gave us a tough one to figure out…
I’m a twit when I tweet?
Well, yeah, that’s how I view it but I’m old and cranky. I do think Twitter is kind of for twits, but again: Old. Cranky.
Ditto