*See video below*
Florida resident Angie Jackson, known on her blog as Angie the Anti-Theist, rocked the blogosphere on February 22 when she decided to live-tweet her abortion in order to 'demystify abortions for other women.'
Right after taking RU-486, a pill that induces miscarriage, Angie started the cameras rolling, creating a YouTube video that was recorded during the abortion itself and included a justification of her decision.
She says,
For a variety of reasons, including very high health risks for me, I am having an abortion. Right now. [...] But yeah I'm having an abortion right now. It's not that bad, it's not that scary, it's basically like a miscarriage.
Angie explains her decision in the YouTube video (see below):
I'm live tweeting my abortion on Twitter--not for some publicity stunt or for attention or to justify this to myself, I am at peace with my decision. I'm doing this to demystify abortion. I'm doing this so that other women know, 'Hey, it's not nearly as terrifying as I had myself worked up thinking it was.' It's just not that bad. This is nothing compared to childbirth, compared to labor, or, for me and my risks, late stage pregnancy.
She live-tweeted her abortion from @AntiTheistAngie and created the hashtag '#livetweetingabortion' for people who wanted to 'follow things in real time or read my hatemail after the fact.'
From her Twitter account, she tweeted details such as 'Cramps are getting a bit more persistant,' 'Definitely bleeding now,' and 'I'm so fucking wiped. Having trouble sleeping obviously. Just took 2 more ibuprofin. Started bleeding a LOT more today.'
In an Q&A with TheFrisky.com, Angie spoke openly about being sexually abused as a child. Doctors told her she would never have children because of the injuries she sustained from the abuse, so her first pregnancy was a 'surprise' but a medically complicated one.
Worried about her health and her young son (who's four years old), she decided she would have no more children. But, despite using birth control, she and her boyfriend found themselves facing another potentially dangerous pregnancy.
Angie explained to The Frisky,
I was relieved to find out that I had this non-surgical option [the abortion pill] and that I was early enough [in my pregnancy] to get it. I was so relieved to see how simple it's been. The actual process has been like a menstrual period. It's not foreign or scary.
She went on to say:
I grew up in a very fundamentalist Christian home and there's a lot of misinformation and lies [about abortion]. They do attempt to terrify women. They try to make abortion sound so scary that women are too terrified to do it. And that's really what I wanted to say, from my personal experience, this was not as bad as labor and birth.
The blogger is not the first woman to post details about a miscarriage on Twitter. Penelope Trunk live-tweeted her own miscarriage, writing, 'I'm in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there's a fucked-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin.'
Both Trunk and Jackson have caused quite a furor with their outspoken stances about abortion. Jackson herself says she is 'astonished' by the backlash, but, as she asserts in her YouTube video, 'I am not ashamed.'
WATCH: