Abortion as Gender Transgression: Reproductive Justice, Queer Theory, and Anti–Crisis Pregnancy Center Activism

Thomsen, Carly; Morrison, Grace Tacherra

doi:10.1086/706487

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…This approach, which makes no distinction between reproductive rights and justice, runs counter to those typical among reproductive justice scholars and activists, who often differentiate themselves from reproductive rights activists by suggesting the latter are too focused on legal rights to abortion, rather than access to abortion, and not focused enough on increasing social supports for raising children (Luna, 2020;Ross and Solinger, 2017). I do so because, as I have argued elsewhere, such a binary approach often functions to frame abortion as outside of reproductive justice, as a simple matter of rights (Thomsen, 2015;Thomsen and Morrison, 2020). Further, crisis pregnancy centers trouble any simple distinctions among legal rights, access, and justice.…”

Section: Fundingmentioning

confidence: 91%

Animating and sustaining outrage: The place of crisis pregnancy centers in abortion justice

Thomsen

2022

Human Geography

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In 2021, U.S. states enacted 106 different abortion restrictions, the highest number of any year since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. Inspiring the most public outcry is Texas's S.B. 8, which bans abortion after six weeks and allows private citizens to sue those performing abortions or aiding in this process. Abortion justice supporters should be enraged—but only in small part due to Texas’ ban, any of the other 105 enacted restrictions, or the likelihood that the Supreme Court soon will hand down a decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. We should be enraged because the anti-abortion movement has chipped away at the accessibility of abortion to the degree that the legal right to abortion means far less than it should. Key to this chipping away has been crisis pregnancy centers—religiously motivated, anti-abortion non-profit organizations that critics describe as “fake women's health clinics.” Today, there are 2500 crisis pregnancy centers and just 738 abortion clinics in the U.S., numbers that were reversed 30 years ago. And yet, countering crisis pregnancy centers has been less central to the work of abortion justice advocates than advancing crisis pregnancy centers has been to the anti-abortion movement. In this article, I argue that focusing on crisis pregnancy centers can provide new opportunities for both understanding the contemporary abortion landscape and also for advancing abortion justice activism. To put a finer point on it, I argue that centering crisis pregnancy centers in our development of what Sydney Calkin terms “the political geography of abortion” is one way to animate outrage among those who have not been involved in abortion justice work previously and to sustain outrage among feminist activists who have been worn down by decades of anti-abortion advancement.

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Section: Fundingmentioning

confidence: 91%

Animating and sustaining outrage: The place of crisis pregnancy centers in abortion justice

Thomsen

2022

Human Geography

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“…Several CPCs have arrangements in their local communities to provide off-site “sexual education” programs, which primarily consist of abstinence-only messaging, gender essentialism, and anti-LBGTQ philosophies. 42 Because they are not medical facilities, CPCs are not subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and many are collecting private client data, which could be used for a range of purposes, from evangelizing to informing anti-abortion lawsuits for bounty in Texas. 17…”

Section: Additional Harms Associated With Cpcsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Problems with Crisis Pregnancy Centers: Reviewing the Literature and Identifying New Directions for Future Research

Montoya¹,

Judge-Golden²,

Swartz³

2022

IJWH

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“…Some are non‐binary but took part as people with bodies that are also affected by a lack of reproductive rights in a way that echoes Butler's understanding of ‘woman’ as a political category. As scholars have pointed out, abortion is not something that only women experience, so it can be a form of ‘gender transgression’ (Thomsen and Morrison, 2020, p. 707). Yet, at the same time the control of abortion and reproductive rights can be seen as a form of productive violence that shapes the category of woman as a reproductive one.…”

Section: ‘To Decide Makes Us Free’: a Feminist Performance For Aborti...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Poner la cuerpa: The Body as a Site of Reproductive Rights Activism in Peru

Martin¹

2022

Bull Latin American Res

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The issue of the body is central to feminist theory and activism. This article draws on social movement and performance theory to analyse the role of the body as a site of activism in performances and as a site that is subject to patriarchal and racial oppression. Through embodied activism, feminists reclaim their bodies as a contested site of oppression to reframe the terms of the debate on abortion and demonstrate the possibility for embodied and creative politics to create new, more inclusive forms of activist practices.

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Abortion as Gender Transgression: Reproductive Justice, Queer Theory, and Anti–Crisis Pregnancy Center Activism

Cited by 9 publications

References 25 publications

Animating and sustaining outrage: The place of crisis pregnancy centers in abortion justice

Animating and sustaining outrage: The place of crisis pregnancy centers in abortion justice

The Problems with Crisis Pregnancy Centers: Reviewing the Literature and Identifying New Directions for Future Research

Poner la cuerpa: The Body as a Site of Reproductive Rights Activism in Peru

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