What Late-Term Abortion Looks Like

Originally posted February 24, 2011, updated and reposted May 5, 2022

As we stand looking at the actuality of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, it is time again to tell my story. I will never stop telling my story; my family’s story. My son’s story. If I could write this in fire I would. For my family, and the countless families who have been and will be hurt, damaged or destroyed by taking away this fundamental right to care over our own bodies, lives, choices and children. We will not go quietly into the night.

~~~

Women don’t have late-term abortions because they changed their mind about having a baby. They aren’t doing it because having a disabled child might be “inconvenient.” They do it out of love. WE do it out of love. My abortion was the most loving thing I did for my first son.

A week before the world ended.

Starry Night Vale

Tags

Fan Art, Starry Night, Starry Night Vale, Welcome to Night Vale, WTNV

This is the first painting I’ve ever done that I truly loved. It took more than a year of work, and after several weeks of effort, I now have a professional scan of it. I can order prints – I ordered one as a test and it looks just like the original! I’m so pleased with it.

Remember, if you see something, say nothing. And drink to forget.

I will not sell this print, as I would never profit from the hard work of the folks that make Welcome to Night Vale. But you are free to download and print a copy for yourself, or to use it or share it – just please make sure it is credited to me (with a link to my blog here or to my tumblr).

Standing Up

I’ve been meaning to get this on the blog since the performance, but life gets in the way of blogging. So here it is – my first Stand Up Comedy performance. Next show is end of August…

April Fool

First, a little backstory.

Many months ago, I was interviewed by Aja Romano for what ultimately became this article. I really should have known better. Aja’s name has shown up on the various wank sites more often than I have. I should have known it wasn’t the best idea, but I didn’t research her history. I thought, given her previous tumblr post warning people about Andy and her previous article about the cult I was in, that she would write an article that would…well, that wouldn’t glorify Andy’s cult-building.

Clearly, I was very mistaken.

Aja blamed her editors at the daily dot and immediately sent me a copy of the draft article that was supposedly very different from the published piece (spoiler alert – it wasn’t)

After the fact, she said she was going to release the various interviews she did with former cult members. I made it clear that I would release the draft she sent me (without any specifications that it be kept private, despite the disclaimers both on this blog and my tumblr) if she failed to release them by the date she chose – March 31.

Below is my correspondence with the Daily Dot editor.

“I am the Managing Editor at The Daily Dot, which owns and operates the Kernel. I am writing to you about the recent article about Andrew Blake written by one of our staff writers, Aja Romano.

Thank you for corresponding so extensively with Ms. Romano in connection with the story. I know that opening up about your personal experiences was emotional and time consuming, and we sincerely appreciate your time and candor.

I understand that you are dissatisfied with the version of the story that we ultimately published and feel that the published version did not reflect what you thought it would (or should). I wanted to explain our editorial decisions and address some important issues surrounding the story.

As you know, the Daily Dot and the Kernel are leading online newspapers. As news organizations, we take pride in — and hold ourselves to — strict journalistic standards of honesty, integrity, objectivity, and transparency. As with most first drafts of our stories, the original version of this story did not meet our rigorous standards and needed a significant amount of editing. The piece was too long, too one-sided, and not sourced well enough to be published. Accordingly, our editors, as they do with all our stories, reviewed, fact-checked, and revised the piece.

The published version of the story was the product of our standard operating procedures and reflected our journalistic standards. We are proud of the story.

We are unhappy, however, with some of Ms. Romano’s interactions with you, including certain promises she made. Specifically, Ms. Romano, as an employee of the Daily Dot, is not — and was never — authorized to share earlier drafts of the story with you or any other source. Though her intentions may have been good, Ms. Romano’s decision to provide you with an unfinished draft of the story was a lapse in her professional judgement. Doing so violated not only our internal procedures, but also our copyright in the story, which is owned and controlled solely by the Daily Dot. Furthermore, Ms. Romano has no authority — and therefore should not have promised — to post, publish, or provide you or any other source with the transcripts of her interviews. Again, the transcripts are owned by the Daily Dot, and only the Daily Dot has the right to control their dissemination.

We understand from your March 10, 2015 Tumblr post that you intend to release the unedited version of the story at the end of this month if Ms. Romano does not post all of the interview transcripts associated with this story. As noted above, the decision of whether to post the transcripts is not Ms. Romano’s to make, so please direct any further coorespondence regarding this story to me.

We are planning to publish the interviews, but it will be done to our standards and on our own timetable. First, as you can certainly appreciate, we need to honor any requests made by our interviewees at the time Ms. Romano conducted the interview. For example, if something was disclosed under conditions of confidentiality or off the record, we need to respect those conditions and either not publish that particular transcript or redact certain portions of it, as applicable. Second, if there are any statements of fact that could be regarded as defamatory and could expose the Daily Dot to legal liability, we will need to redact those portions. Given the two foregoing requirements and the sheer breadth of the interview material that will need to be reviewed by us and our legal counsel, this process will take time. We estimate it will require around four weeks.

I trust that this satisfies your concerns. Please understand that we are not offering to publish the transcripts in response to any threats, but in the interest of transparency and closure.

In light of my assurances to you to publish the interview transcripts as set forth above, please confirm to me that you will honor you promise to Ms. Romano and not publish or distribute the pre-publication draft of the article. In addition, I request that you delete any copies you may have of the original article, as it is the copyrighted property of the Daily Dot, and Ms. Romano had no right to share it with you. Please understand that the draft of the story you have contained a host of potentially problematic issues, and any publication could expose anyone publishing it — including you — to legal liability from third parties.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Very truly yours,

Austin Powell
Managing Editor”

Everybody got that?

I was displeased, to say the least, at this development. Furthermore, I was down with a nasty cold most of last week, so I let my rage (and virus) simmer until I finally sent my reply on March 29. Here it is:

Dear Mr. Powell,

It is certainly your right to be proud of the article you have published. I would expect any legitimate publication to stand by their own stories.

However, you are failing to note that in taking on a subject like Andrew Blake, you were knowingly taking on a risk.  When you publish an article about a known abuser and cult leader, the risk that some statements may appear “defamatory” must surely be accepted.  A failure to accept this risk results only in the sidelining and silencing of victims, as is evident from your final published article.  This is what you must redress with the publication of interviews, and this is where your priority must lie if you are to be taken seriously as a “leading online newspaper”.

It is of course understandable that you seek to protect yourselves from litigation, but you also have an ethical responsibility to Andy’s past and potential victims, a responsibility that in my opinion you failed to meet.  You published an article that portrayed an abuser and cult leader as a fascinating person, one who might be “worth the risk” of involvement.  It was your choice to end it on that note.  You also allowed Aja Romano, your reporter, to utterly fail to interrogate Andy on his many excuses and claims, claims that the article could have at least questioned without fear of legal reprisal.  (For example, in the interview, Andrew Blake admits to sexual abuse of victims, offering spurious defense, and yet Ms. Romano had no further questions on that topic, apparently.  This is an astonishing oversight for someone who represents herself as a professional journalist and an appalling opportunity offered to an admitted sexual abuser to excuse his own behavior.)

You must also accept responsibility for the unethical treatment of Andy Blake’s past victims.  I am extremely unhappy with Ms. Romano and her interactions with both me and my fellow victims. She has been rude, dismissive and extremely sloppy in her “research” and her treatment of all of us. Many of us have openly stated that we feel dirty and used in the wake of her interactions and the article that she produced.  Again, though you are not legally responsible for such treatment, you are ethically responsible.

Further ethical responsibility must be accepted by you regarding your use of Brittany Quinn’s tragic death and your total misrepresentation of the blogs known as “Andy Awareness” blogs.  I can only hope that the publication of interviews by you will go some way towards redressing the several wrongs committed by you in the publication of this irresponsible article.

As regards the draft shared by Ms. Romano, if she had no authorization to share it, or to make any promises regarding the release of information and interview transcripts, perhaps this is something you should take up with her. Particularly , particularly since she has publicly and consistently blamed her editors as being at fault. Her continued unprofessional behavior reflects very badly on The Daily Dot, and I know that I am not alone in my opinion.

Ms. Romano sent me the draft article with no statements indicating that it was to be kept in confidence. I quote from her original email here:

“This is the version I filed before any edits at all, including self-editing. The final version had been hacked down by me (I cut 4,000 words in a shorter version but filed this version too), and then it was gone over again by three different supervising editors and a copy editor.

Any mistakes and factual errors in this version are all mine. I will say that the last section, the mention about AB “forgetting to give me an answer,” was written before his last-minute email, which my editor insisted on quoting a huge chunk of. i just hate how much AB got direct-quoted in that article. ugh, i hate it.

anyway.”

I have clearly stated on my blog and my tumblr, “Any correspondence may be published in whole or in part at my sole discretion unless specified as private.” As you can see from the email excerpt above, Ms. Romano made no such indication that this was private. As such, although I had yet to publish any version of the draft article, I have already shared it with a number of my fellow victims/interviewees. I will be forwarding your notice to them so that they may protect themselves, but I will not be held responsible for your reporter’s actions and negligence both in sending it to me to begin with and in failing to specify that it was to be kept in confidence. Your attempt to place the responsibility on me for limiting the distribution of this article is highly inappropriate, as are your vague threats of legal reprisal.

Nevertheless, I can assure you that I won’t be publishing the draft on my blog. I’m a wife, mother and very small time blogger and have no interest in the vendetta of a publication that employs journalists such as Aja Romano. I haven’t the resources to fight a copyright claim, and I would like very much to have no further dealings with Ms. Romano.  I have deleted my own copy of the draft, but I cannot and will not be held responsible for other copies that already exist and have been shared, nor will I refrain from commentary regarding this article, Ms. Romano’s behavior, or this entire situation.

I have worked very hard to regain my own reputation as an honest person, both personally and online. I am extremely incensed that your employee has caused this situation, and put me in this position. I had no notable contact with Ms. Romano prior to her contacting me about this article, and it was I who put her in contact with many of Andy Blake’s victims. I don’t take well to being used as Ms. Romano has used me, and I deeply resent that she was able to hurt people through my vouching for her.

I look forward to reading the released copies of the interviews. I also hold myself accountable in terms of honesty, integrity, objectivity and transparency. It is in that spirit that I will be publishing our correspondence, both to my tumblr and to my blog.

Sincerely,
Abbey Willson
KumquatWriter

So what happens now?

I have not yet heard a reply from The Daily Dot. However, I am well aware that more than one interviewee intend to self-publish their interviews, or have sent them to me with requests and permission to publish them. That means that it won’t be that long before at least some of the material Aja and The Daily Dot are withholding will be available. Also, as I stated in the letter above, I had already shared copies of the draft article (which had no specification that I was not to when it was sent). That means that, although I have contacted all of those parties and told them not to publish it, there will undoubtedly be commentary forthcoming.

In Memory of Gavin Michael

It’s been one year today since the tragic and preventable death of Gavin Michael.  In that year I’ve become friends with his mother, Danielle, whom I blogged about here. She later said it helped her see how she was being manipulated by midwife Christy Collins.

In the last year,  not one person responsible for Gavin’s death has so much as expressed sadness for it – let alone guilt, grief or responsibility.  Jan Tritten,  Midwifery Today magazine,  Christy Collins – nothing.  Except to ban and delete all evidence that it ever happened.

Don’t let them hide another unnecessary, completely preventable baby death. Don’t let them bury another child twice. 

Life, The Universe and Writer’s Block

I was interviewed by MotherJones.com some time ago about my son’s life and death. I have tried to make a post ever since, especially with all the anti choice legislation and seas of misinformation out there. But I just haven’t been able to. I’ve been on a blogging hiatus as I focus on my living son, my husband, my family and my job.

I've written my heart out for Isaac already

I’m still around.  I update my Tumblr on occasion and express my creativity through arts and crafts.  Lately, papercraft.

I have a half dozen almost-finished posts, but I’m so stressed about how tomorrow’s article will go that I haven’t made much progress on any of them.

I spent an hour on one tonight only to have the computer eat it, so this is the best I have. If you’re new here, welcome.  Most of what I write is about my life and my history.  My son’s death and my experiences with it are here. I’ve got lots of archives and new work is always forthcoming.  Read and enjoy, and forgive a busy mom for putting life above prompt blog posts.

Wouldn't you?

AMA

I hosted an AMA on my livejournal last month, and finally completed all the questions.  You can read it here.

New content over at Off the Rails

The Cult Test (questions 1-10)

Also, can’t help noticing all the new readers. Welcome! I suggest you check out the Rider’s Guide over at my more cult/survivor focused blog (although many posts are still hosted here on my main site and most originated here).

Christy Collins Rewrites History

Tags

notburiedtwice

I’ve been very closely following a particularly heartbreaking chain of events this week. If you are not familiar with the #notburiedtwice campaign, I strongly suggest you read this post.

In brief: Midwife Christy Collins, currently of Las Vegas, caused the totally preventable death of a baby through what in any regulated health care profession would be gross and obvious malpractice. She ignored a clear indication for immediate induction of labor: absolutely no amniotic fluid in a woman two weeks past her due date. Instead of transferring care, Christy crowdsourced “stories/opinions” via Jan Tritten, editor of Midwifery Today on Facebook. She subsequently delayed care by driving her client 30 minutes to a hospital that has a “midwife friendly” doctor. The baby died, and the midwifery community began to delete all evidence of the entire thing, including trying to hide Christy’s identity.

Luckily,  the crowdsourcing led to a great roar of outrage from readers, who got busy screen capping and digging for the truth. As the truth behind Christy Collins’ and Jan Tritten’s lies unfolds, a letter came to light, which I am going to unpack.

There’s a lot to unpack, and very few LOLs to help.

For those new to my writing, I was in a cultic abusive relationship for over five years. I had a partner who created a small cult that, at times, would dwindle to me as the only follower. I was young, naïve and trusting, and I was at a major crossroads as a recent college graduate in a new and un fulfilling marriage.  My abuser used a variety of brainwashing and manipulation tactics on me until I believed everything he said – which included that he could channel other beings, that my family and friends were the real abusers,  that he became other people (including a “doctor”) and more. I ultimately divorced,  cut off my family and friends and lived totally in his living fiction until I was able to break free.

After extensive deprogramming and therapy, I became very interested in Munchausen by Internet,  a phenomenon detailed by Dr. Marc Feldman.  I’ve followed several cases and written about the tactics used in cultic and manipulative abuse. It’s become almost a hobby, deconstructing the carefully crafted doublespeak. It is from that background I draw as I look at the following letter.

Next post will be far LOL-ier and less wall-of-text-ier

The full text of the letter has not been released, so I am making some educated guesses to fill in the blanks. I know this letter was written by Christy Collins, almost certainly to the mother, after the birth and death. I don’t know the identity of the family and do not want to add to their pain, so know that my estimations of the mother’s feelings and reactions is speculative. Nor do I think the baby’s father was unaffected; I am focusing on the mother as the letter appears to be to her. We are missing the introduction to the letter; we jump right in to Christy’s defense.

I wish I could go back in time, and have said stronger words – enough to make you hate me, and fell you had no choice but to go into the hospital the day before.

Right here, Christy is immediately laying the guilt on the mother. She gives an initial illusion of remorse, but immediately shows that she’s placed herself in the power position. This will become more apparent as we go along, but even in this first sentence it’s quite clear.  Further, it’s important to note that, for the mother right now, Christy is likely still deeply trusted, so this primes Mom to say, “I could NEVER hate YOU!”

I could’ve lived with you hating me, over this feeling of devastation.

So much in each sentence. It’s really a masterpiece. This is all about Christy and how much the baby’s death hurt Christy so much.  And that makes Christy so sympathetic, because she regrets it so. When you’re in any relationship where you are being groomed and manipulated, pain and sorrow felt by the manipulator is YOUR problem. This also prompts a soothing “it wasn’t your fault” response from Mom.

I know we say that we don’t know if it would’ve been any different; maybe he would’ve been very sick, but alive. I don’t know. But I wish I wouldn’t pushed much hard and said the things that we never want to hear the ‘experts’ say…

Translation: there’s nothing we could have done differently,  because OBVIOUSLY Christy would have done it. Except it would have made the mother hate Christy.  So really, whose fault is it? She’s not saying it outright… yet.

Instead of … telling you to “be prepared that the perinatologist doing the NST is likely to tell you that your baby could die if he doesn’t come out;” those should have been MY words.

Christy tips her hand a bit here. She told the parents that the doctor (or tech or whomever was at the testing facility) would be the bad guy. There is a tremendous pressure within the homebirth/natural childbirth movement to distrust all authority except the midwife, and Christy admits that she prepared the parents to ignore the (potentially lifesaving for the baby) advice. It is essential, though, that Christy acknowledge this if she wants her veneer of regret to stick.

You might have been really pissed at me for pushing you into a corner where you felt you didn’t have a choice, but … I wouldn’t care…

Here the picture of Mom as irrational and truly at fault becomes clearer. Because Christy was protecting herself from this woman who would have HATED her for agreeing with the medical establishment. 

I am angry at myself for being the midwife who tried to be as firm but gentle as possible when advising to go in when I could’ve waved the dead baby flag…

Christy could have been the hated hero, instead of the tragically kind friend. There’s a subtle dig at doctors here too – if only OBs weren’t so gung-ho about “playing the dead baby card” and “scaremongering!” It conveniently ignores the scaremongering Christy did in regard to the doctors in the first place.

I wanted so badly to see a change in fluid … while you just wanted time/space to think …

Translation: Remember, YOU wanted to process the information. I just hoped it would be okay since I didn’t dare contradict you.

If I hadn’t agreed, and used the words “your baby could die because of this …”, maybe he would still be here.

Right here, she puts full blame on the mother. “If I had dared to disagree with you, baby might be alive. But YOU wanted TIME.

My back up doctor was amazing and the whole team worked so fast.

So it isn’t THEIR fault, no way. The fact that Christy withheld crucial information from that “amazing” team doesn’t bear mentioning. I bet she wasn’t calling them “amazing” while she was prepping the mother to ignore them.

Then the longest 47 minutes of our lives while they worked on your baby who had clearly been soaking in mec for weeks.

So it couldn’t POSSIBLY be Christy’s fault. Also, the image is devastating and would serve to give a dose of fresh anguish about the baby to distract from “hating” Christy.

Acidosis … bad blood gases … the worst of which had occurred in the last 20 minutes.

If Mom hadn’t been SO INSISTENT on waiting…and yet baby was clearly soaking “for weeks” in meconium. Christy is really underlining who she wants Mom to blame: Herself (and not Christy). Also not mentioned: The 30 minute drive to a hospital where there was a “midwife friendly” OB. 30 minutes, containing those last 20 minutes.

An induction yesterday, just one day after a perfect NST may not have mattered anyhow we were told…

If I hadn’t agreed to your desire to wait he might have lived! But he was doomed, so it’s not my fault! Although Christy pauses to note that they were told that by the scaremongering doctors you aren’t supposed to listen to.

Baby sounded perfect the next morning and we had the same BPP result after you rehydrated. You still wanted more time.

You had no reason to worry, so you wanted to wait, just like I taught you. So it’s your fault.

I said I didn’t feel we had any, and read to you what even other midwives had to say. That I wasn’t the only one who felt a sense of urgency.

This part requires extra unpacking, especially if you haven’t read the initial crowdsourcing post. The first big problem is that the majority of the midwives who replied gave dangerously uneducated answers. This is a situation where there is literally only one correct course of action: go to the hospital and get the baby OUT. Immediate induction or c – section, or else the baby may very well die. As we have seen happen here. Knowing this, and that very few responders gave any “sense of urgency” until after the update stating the baby had died, it is chilling to envision what happened at that computer.

Obviously this is conjecture, but my guess is that Christy read the comments and used tone of voice and careful wording to give mom a clear sense that there was consensus to wait. She could then,  after the baby died, use the same words with different emphasis and tone to make mom think there was NOT consensus to wait. This is gaslighting. Mom, who is questioning herself at this point (as anyone would), may ultimately remember the second version of the story instead of the first. False memories are disturbingly easy to create.

Only 20 minutes later, your baby showed distress. And hour later, your baby was out … and gone.

Another dose of grief, make sure Mom can’t think for too long about any one point.

I wish I would’ve been so harsh with my words the day before, that you would’ve hated me.

Christy wants Mom to think Christy’s wracked with unjust guilt, because Mom was clearly so unstable.

Maybe you would be nursing your baby, angry about your induced birth experience, and refusing my visits.

Grief-and-guilt combo.  Notice how she keeps making deliberately heartrending references to the loss? Keeping Mom in a high state of anguish prevents critical thinking. Mom can’t stop and remember exactly what happened.  Memories recorded in a state of great emotion also can be both less reliable and more vivid.

Instead you and the daddy slept with your dead baby all night in a hospital bed …

This is exactly what I mean.  That image us so heartbreaking that it’s where I had to stop reading and cry myself. It’s blunt and heartless and designed to make Mom cry too.

I blame me. I would rather have you hate me for pushing you harder into a bad birth experience … so you could hold a live baby instead.

And back around to Christy reminding Mom that this pain is Mom’s fault. If ONLY it had been SAFE to even SAY anything, but you’d HATE me for it!

Midwifery implies choices. Informed consent. Informed refusal.

A sudden shift to a totally businesslike argument that still focuses only on Mom’s Choice. Throwing “informed consent” and “informed refusal” as sentence fragments additionally helps plant them in Mom’s head (still reeling from the words “your dead baby.”)  This letter doesn’t miss a trick in the manipulator manual.

No woman would refuse an induction if she knew what having a dead baby felt like.

Book-ending the buzzwords, Christy is implanting with another round of anguish and the blunt use of “dead baby” again.  While in this one case I agree with the words Christy wrote, context is everything. She’s making it clear that Mom refused an induction and implicitly the baby’s death is Mom’s fault.

I’ll say, no mother who has lost a baby is going to feel anything but raw anguish at blunt language like that within mere days of the loss. I have lost a baby (under vastly different circumstances) and words like that, during the rawest phase of grief, sear in a special, terrible way. To have them coming from someone you trust profoundly (as Christy clearly arranged, what with the “you’d hate me” focus) would be indescribable.

In the future, I’ll pressure until my client hates me. I won’t care.

That’s right, if she gets another irrational, unstable mother to be, she will use you as the Goofus to her Gallant and risk being hated. This is also an extra pang of guilt for Mom, and one that could easily slip under the radar: that Mom “ruined” Christy’s caring, gentle nature and MADE her not care. From inside of the manipulation, that is powerful shame to bear.

How is this mother supposed to know what to think, with Christy reframing? It is not coincidental that this letter was rushed out while mom is still deep in the trauma. Every word here is chosen to elicit a specific response. It’s a perfect manipulative attack, and my heart breaks for this mother. It is all the worse because the community that has supported the mother has already turned on her. The midwives who responded to the crowdsourcing are all very adamant that this was ALL MOM’S CHOICE.

It wasn’t.  This letter is just one more piece of evidence that it was Christy Collins, CPM and the community supporting her dangerous, manipulative agenda. Trying to blame it on the mother – and make her blame herself – is just the vile icing on a deadly cake.

I will fight to my last breath lying liars who lie, especially those who break hearts and cause deaths.

New content over at Off the Rails:

Read “Turn and Face the Strange”