Two years ago when I was working at Jezebel, I wrote a post about a woman who started a blog called What to Expect When You’re Aborting , where she wrote about ending her pregnancy in great detail. At the time, she said she started the Tumblr because , “When I found out i was knocked up I obviously googled ‘abortion blog’. The shit that came up was absolutely awful and distasteful propaganda. I thought the next time some one googled it this might show up.” I thought that was a fairly noble reason to talk about her true experience-and my hope is that when girls google abortion information today, they come upon the MTV special that aired last night: No Easy Decision .
Salon ‘s Lynn Harris has a great post about what’s so excellent about this one-off show, which you should read here . But she laments the fact that the show was “buried” without publicity, and that MTV has no plans to reair it as of now. I contacted MTV’s P.R. department-they don’t have numbers yet on how many people watched last night’s episode. I would contend, though, that young women today get their info primarily online, and it doesn’t matter whether or not they watched the show when it aired. Take Markai, the featured teen in No Easy Decision (she was also on MTV’s 1 6 and Pregnant this season). She becomes pregnant again because she doesn’t properly understand how her Depo Provera shot works-she doesn’t realize that if she misses an appointment the hormones are no longer in her system. In a discussion with Dr. Drew, Markai says that she is angry with herself, beause she should have known about the Depo, “I should have looked my birth control up on the internet.”
MTV has done a great service making this show available online, and Markai is so brave to share her story ( USA Today notes that Markai is taking a lot of heat already on her Facebook page ). In connection with the show, the nonprofit organization Exhale has started a Web site called 16 & Loved to let women who have had abortions know that they are not alone. Extended clip from No Easy Decision is below.
