Donning Sackcloth and Ashes:Webster v. reproductive health servicesand moral agony in abortion rights rhetoric

The Rhetoric ofRoe v. Wade: When the (Male) Doctor Knows Best

“…A new constitutive rhetoric could legitimate an alternative field of argument and acknowledge an agentic status of women. Discussing reproductive rights advocacy, Tonn (1996) argued: ''the most effective rhetorical approach for abortion rights advocates may be to locate the ethical question of abortion in the issue of sex discrimination rather than in opposition propositions of embryonic life and interests'' (p. 277). Although the medical framework of Roe has encouraged a preoccupation with embryonic interests in judicial and public argument, abortion rights advocates must refuse to be constituted by this field of argument.…”

Pro-Life, Pro-Woman? Frame Extension in the American Antiabortion Movement

“…The "choice" framework had begun to show its limits, in spite of the movement's ability to fend off many legal challenges. Discredited sparingly on the left as having too consumerist a cast (Solinger 2001) and not protecting rights strongly enough (MacKinnon 1987), and widely on the right for portraying women as callous in their abortion decisions, prochoice organizations began to soften the language of abstract legal rights by telling their personal story through a narrative of agony (Tonn 1996). In order to "counter the damaging perception promoted by the opposition that women elected abortions on whim, caprice, and with a cavalier disregard for the life of other human beings," (Tonn 1996, 268) pro-choice organizations showcased the narratives of post-abortive women who would talk about the emotional pain of their abortion decisions-not just their legal right to procure them.…”

Narrative Diversity and Sympathetic Abortion: What Online Storytelling Reveals About the Prescribed Norms of the Mainstream Movements

“…By the 1990s, a mainstream pro‐choice presence gave way to more moderate rhetoric that limited the definition of acceptable abortions and worthy procurers. Tonn () locates the seed of pro‐choice abdication from earlier, more radical advocacy in the Supreme Court's favorable three‐part ruling itself, asserting that constitutional limitation of abortion rights in later pregnancy in many ways codifies fetal personhood. Advocates, perceiving growing public disdain for unqualified abortion rights, met these challenges with progressively apologetic rhetoric and an emphasis on abortion seekers as anguished and moral decision‐makers (Tonn ).…”