Angie Jackson on CNN

Angie Jackson, the blogger who chronicled her abortion via Twitter and YouTube, was on CNN today, talking with anchor Kyra Phillips about her awareness-raising project. Angie was awesome; I love how she seamlessly worked in a plug for I'm Not Sorry. Kyra was weird and judgmental, if significantly less weird and judgmental than, say, that douchebag Rick Sanchez would have been—although I wonder how much weirder and more judgmental she might have been if Angie's primary reason for getting an abortion was, simply, "I don't want a kid right now."

Anyway, here's the video, and a full transcript is below. Enjoy.

Angie Jackson, on YouTube video clip: Yeah. I'm having an abortion right now. It's not that bad. It's not that scary. It's basically like a miscarriage. I'm live-tweeting my abortion on Twitter. Not for some publicity stunt or attention or to justify this to myself. I am at peace with my decision.

Kyra Phillips, in studio: So what motivated Angie to end her pregnancy? She says she used an IUD for birth control, but it failed. She also said that her pregnancy nearly killed her and her doctor told her not to have another child. So the 27-year-old Florida woman took the abortion pill RU-486, putting this private information out there for everyone to see. And it's gotten a lot of reaction. Positive, negative, even threatening. So why tweet about it? Angie joins me now live from Tampa. So, Angie, did it take a while to come to a comfort zone that you wanted to do this? Tell me how you eventually decided: "This is how I'm going to do it and I'm going to let everybody see it happen."

Jackson, via satellite: Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm a blogger, and I'm actually writing a book "Birth and Death: Life of a Newborn Cult" about my experiences. And a talk about a lot of controversial or hot button issues every day. So for me this wasn't even that different. This was just an extension of continuing to talk openly about taboo subjects in a way that just by sharing my own story allows other people to share theirs or to talk about how they feel.

Phillips: Let's go ahead and look at another chunk of that live tweeting that you did as you were having an abortion.

Jackson, on video: Yes, it had the potential for that embryo to become a fetus, to become a person. Hypothetically. It could have been a person that was made up of my boyfriend and my DNA. But it was more likely to kill me. And you're not going to shame me. You're not going to silence me. I do not feel sorry that I saved my life. I do not feel sorry that I stayed here for myself, for my boyfriend, for my kid that I've already got.

Phillips: What did your doctor say was going to happen to you if you tried to carry that child?

Jackson: Well, when I had my son, who is four now, I had a tremendously difficult pregnancy and 98-hour back labor. My doctors advised me to avoid becoming pregnant again, which is why I had an IUD inserted in my cervix. However, there is no 100% effective form of contraception, not even tubal ligation or vasectomy. And so I had prepared that, if I became pregnant anyway, I would have an abortion because the risks were too high for me to continue a pregnancy.

Phillips: As you well know, we've been looking at all the various comments, both negative and positive to what you did. And these are really harsh—but people wrote in and said—they called you all kinds of names from being a whore to someone who just couldn't keep her legs closed; they called you a baby killer. I mean, it's even hard for me to say these things because some of those, the e-mails and the responses were so brutal. How did that make you feel? Did that bother you? Did it make you think twice about what you did?

Jackson: Actually, if anything, it showed me more how important it is to talk about taboo things or to talk about personal things. About half of American women will have an unintended pregnancy before the age of 45. And one in three American women will have an abortion sometime during their childbearing years. And yet this is something we almost never talk about—or at least we talk about the political aspects, but not the individual women. Some of the heat that I've gotten has certainly showed me what the cost of that silence is, is that when a woman does want to discuss it, she's—uh, the reaction is quite strong.

Phillips: What would you do if you got pregnant again?

Jackson: Of course the goal is to avoid that. But I mean, my health conditions have not changed. And if I was pregnant again, I would, of course, have another abortion.

Phillips: Final question. What made you decide to do the RU-486? Is that something you discussed with your boyfriend? How quick did you make that decision? Why that route?

Jackson: Sure. I investigated—I looked at a couple of web sites, one of which is imnotsorry.net, which includes a lot of personal abortion stories. And I read how different women had felt. I thought that the RU-486 abortion pill at home would be a more natural and comfortable experience. I was also too early in my pregnancy to be eligible for a surgical abortion. I was only four weeks. And so RU-486 was the medically recommended choice.

Phillips: Angie Jackson, very interesting. It definitely caught our attention. I actually didn't believe that you actually did it until I saw it. And it's pretty fascinating, the reasons that you have for doing it. And we're going to follow the video and the continued responses that you've gotten. You've also received a lot of support for what you did as well to sort of demystify what it's like to have an abortion. Interesting. Angie Jackson, thanks for your time.

Jackson: Thank you so much for having me.