Abstract

In this paper, I argue that Angie Jackson and her live-tweeting of her abortion and Step Herold, and devel-opment of the #ihadanabortion hashtag, used twitter to practice empathy-as-care. Challenging the perception, fueled by newspaper reports, television news segments, popular accounts of scientific studies and academic articles, that twitter strips us of our empathy and makes us uncaring and apathetic, I explore how Angie Jackson's live-tweet and Steph Herold's hashtag enabled users to care about, care for and care with women who have had abortions. While the caring practices that these projects allowed for were tenuous, fleeting and not always successful, their presence on twitter indicates that social media like twitter have the potential to enable us to care and should be taken seriously as spaces with ethical value