Friday March 12, 2010
What Happened to ‘Next Thursday’?
Pro-life blogger concerned after RU-486 abortion Tweeter goes silent
By Peter J. Smith
UNITED STATES, March 12, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – “What happened to Next Thursday?” That’s the question that pro-life blogger Jill Stanek is asking after a woman, who started live-tweeting the process of her RU-486 abortion under the alias of “Next Thursday,” suddenly went silent after complaining of severe bleeding.
The abrupt cessation of Next Thursday’s Twitter and blog posts has Stanek concerned. She recently revealed in a column for World Net Daily that she has tried to reach out to Next Thursday to find out if she is all right.
The woman known as Next Thursday said she felt inspired by Angie Jackson, who made headlines recently by announcing that she was going to “de-mystify” abortion by posting live-updates of her RU-486 abortion on Twitter. Next Thursday said she already had three young children and was breastfeeding a nine-month old baby and did not want to give birth again.
So de-mystify abortion they did – but not in the way either woman expected. Jackson originally predicted on Feb. 18 that the chemical abortion would be a “four-hour bleed-out.” Instead it dragged into an excruciatingly painful, two-week ordeal. At one point she said she consumed an entire bottle of 20 Tylenol with codeine over the space of six days in order to deal with painful cramping, along with pelvic pain, backaches, nausea, vomiting, and headaches.
Stanek says that Jackson stopped tweeting her graphic symptoms once she got wind that the pro-life leader was blogging about her experience. The complaints after that became much more veiled. Jackson’s abortion lasted until March 2, when a Planned Parenthood employee gave her the all-clear. However the backaches, nausea, and vomiting persisted over the next four days.
But for Next Thursday, the tweets only lasted three days – from Feb. 25 through Feb. 28 – and then ended on a rather ominous note. In the intervening days, Next Thursday described intermittent bleeding from “overflowing to practically nothing” and then bleeding “back on high.”
The woman’s second to last tweet reads: “I’ve been bleeding like a stuffed pig all day.” Later in the evening, Next Thursday posted her last tweet at 9:57 p.m. saying, “Just still bleeding.”
“Since that last tweet 10 days ago no one has heard from Next Thursday. Jackson wrote she has reached out to her with no response,” wrote Stanek.
Stanak has pointed out that Next Thursday dropped some information that indicated Planned Parenthood employees may have given her “off-label” instructions for taking RU-486, putting her at heightened risk of complications.
RU-486 is a combination of two drugs: the first, Mifepristone, is a pill that kills the unborn baby, while the second drug, Misoprostol, expels the dead baby from the mother’s body through contractions. FDA protocols require that women take both steps of RU-486 in a medical office in order to monitor for complications. Next Thursday, however, was sent home by Planned Parenthood to take step two on her own.
The FDA also stipulates that women ingest RU-486 orally, but Next Thursday tweeted that she “inserted 4 pills for step 2” – indicating that Planned Parenthood employees recommended vaginal insertion for Misoprostol in the face of FDA guidelines.
A study conducted at the University of Michigan reported in 2008 that the researchers found a correlation between using RU-486 vaginally and the deaths of eight American women. They found that Misoprostol pills can allow Clostridium sordellii, normally non-threatening bacteria, to cause a deadly infection when taken vaginally. This confirmed the findings of other researchers.
The risks of taking RU-486, however, extend beyond only those who take the drugs vaginally. Concerned Women for America, a pro-life women’s organization, has obtained public documents from the FDA under the Freedom of Information Act, listing over 600 adverse effects recorded from women taking RU-486, including 220 cases of hemorrhage that were either life threatening or extremely serious, 71 of which required blood transfusions. In addition, 392 reports indicated women requiring surgery to repair damage resulting from the abortion, including many under emergency conditions.
Jackson, for her part, surmised that Next Thursday’s abortion “may very well be done,” and despite her own experience and its parallel to Next Thursday’s ordeal, she insisted that RU-486 “is most frequently effective within 24 hours” and “often works in a single evening, not a whole week like it did for me.”
Stanek’s repeated asking on Twitter and elsewhere if anyone had knowledge of Next Thursday and how she was doing, was harshly rejected by some, with one pro-abortion Twitterer telling Stanek she should worry about other things, but instead, “You Fixate on Nextthurs.”
“Yes, guilty. Pro-lifers indeed ‘fixate’ not only on the babies but their moms,” stated Stanek. “I really do care about the whereabouts of Next Thursday. Is she alive? Is she dead? Is she in the hospital? Is she maimed? Is she so traumatized she can’t talk about it? Did she stop breast-feeding? Is her 9-month-old OK?”
“While pro-aborts don’t want to hear about it when a ‘safe and legal’ abortion goes bad, or about the multitude of after-affects, pro-lifers stay to help pick up the pieces. We’re here for you, Next Thursday. Please let us know how we can help.”
See related coverage:
Twitter RU-486 Abortion Chronicles to ‘Demystify’ Procedure Go Sour
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/mar/10030513.html
Planned Parenthood Implicated in RU-486 Deaths of Four Women
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jun/08061907.html
Two More Women Die After Medical Abortion with Abortion Pill RU-486, FDA Warns
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/mar/06031702.html
Leading Researcher Proves RU-486 Causes Septic Shock Deaths
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/jul/05072802.html