Jackson says she was terrified at first about taking the abortion pill because she didn't know what to expect. "I just wanted other women to know they didn't have to be as terrified as I was. I was so scared."
She says she shared her story hoping it would help someone else. "Because I know that there are other women out there who have had abortions that they aren't torn up about. That don't make them feel ashamed. Maybe they knew it was the right choice, but our culture silences them and says that they're not allowed to talk about their abortion unless they're sad."
So what kind of reaction does her live tweeting get?
"I had expected to be called a slut and a murderer. Those are words we're used to being called when it comes to reproductive rights. I hadn't expected to have someone say they wished my son would be ripped from limb to limb in front of me. I hadn't expected some of the very vulgar sexually violent things people have wished on me. It's been rather shocking for people who claim that their motivation is the interest of an unborn child to then turn around and threaten the life of my four year old."
Now if you're a young woman looking for reassurance on abortion, is this reassuring?
I don't think it's right to threaten people and anyone who makes death threats is not pro-life as far as I'm concerned.
Yet the whole purpose of the exercise was to make women more at ease with their abortion decision. Would this do it? Somehow I'm skeptical.
I think she thought that by demystifying abortion, she would make it more acceptable. I think it just angered people more because not only is she doing something considered to be gravely wrong, but she is being very exhibitionist about it.
The other miscalculation she made, I think, is that she thought that pro-lifers want to keep abortion hidden and women in silence.
As a pro-life blogger, I will say: there is nothing I love more than demystifying abortion. There is nothing that interests me more than having women talk about their abortions in all honesty. A hundred women can talk about their abortions. Maybe ten will admit to regret. If those ten do it, then you know there are those among the ninety who are regretting it to. You have a critical mass of testimonies to make abortion-minded women reconsider their decision.
Think about it. If I'm going to have life-altering surgery, and 10 people say that they regretted their decision to have that surgery, I'm going to think twice, regardless of my views on the morality of the surgery-- and I might think it's perfectly fine. I had Lasik surgery last year, and if ten people out of a hundred had said that they had regretted their decision, I would not have paid $4000 on a procedure that could have ruined my eyesight or my life.
There's a reason why abortion is kept under wraps by the abortion industry itself.
It's just an ugly procedure that kills a human being.
Live tweeting it will not change that. In fact, I think this whole PR stunt shows the lack of understanding of the dynamics of the abortion debate.
The pro-choice side has always emphasized the secretiveness of the situation. They use euphemistic language to describe the procedure-- never plain English. It's either grossly simplified language that glosses over the details (e.g. "the uterus is emptied of its contents") or it is highly medicalized to the point of asepticizing the procedure.
If abortion supporters had wanted to demystify the procedure, they could have passed out pictures of what aborted fetuses looked like 20 years ago. But they didn't do that. It took Bernard Nathanson's The Silent Scream to show abortion to the masses. Did abortion supporters repeat the experiment and show what a "real" abortion looks like on an ultrasound? Of course not. Because they don't want people to know the truth.
There's a reason why they want to keep the focus on the woman and how it "saves" women, and not on the problems it can engender, or on the fetus.
If abortion supporters wanted women to know the truth about the procedure, they would show them. It's not like they don't have the technology or the opportunity to make the plain facts available to people. Take a 4D ultrasound, find a volunteer, film an abortion, post it on Youtube or some other website. Voila. The truth about abortion.
Why is that so hard?
It's hard because it would prove pro-lifers right.
Angie went out and live tweeted her abortion thinking that if she showed it to be a safe, harmless procedure from her obviously biased perspective (would she live tweet something going wrong with her abortion? One wonders) then that would make women feel comfortable with their abortion decision.
The problem is: it doesn't address what makes people uncomfortable about abortion. Abortion supporters have trouble admitting this: what makes people uncomfortable about abortion is that it kills a fetus. They can focus on the so-called misogyny all they like, if they don't confront the fetus, they will never get anywhere.
But they won't. They instinctively know that the minute they focus on the fetus, their cause is dead.
This is why the culture of abortion will implode. It cannot face the truth. And a culture based on lies can only last so long. Whether the pro-aborts say nothing or try to demystify abortion, they will hang themselves one way or another. Their cause is doomed. It's just a matter of time before the fall of legal abortion and the advent of fetal rights.
