Father Knows Best: “Protecting” Women through State Surveillance and Social Control in Anti‐Abortion Policy

Abstract

Drawing on a feminist surveillance and social control framework, we conduct a manifest and latent content analysis of anti‐abortion policies passed in the United States in either a state's House or Senate from 2010 to 2015 to systematically assess the scope, content, and implicit meaning of 282 anti‐abortion bills. We find that out of the 727 anti‐abortion measures contained in this legislation, 622 incorporate surveillance, and social control mechanisms that operate together to socially construct women as a dependent population in need of government protection on two fronts: protection for women and their “unborn,” and protection from abortion providers. Fusing together womanhood and motherhood, these policies essentialize motherhood, depicting women as an uninformed group in need of protection from their own ignorance and the practices of abortion providers who are constructed as an unethical group of health‐care practitioners. Related Articles Hussey, Laura S. 2013. “Crisis Pregnancy Centers, Poverty, and the Expanding Frontiers of American Abortion Politics.” Politics & Policy 41 (6): 985‐1011. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12054 Medoff, Marshall H. 2010. “State Abortion Policy and the Long‐Term Impact of Parental Involvement Laws.” Politics & Policy 38 (2): 193‐221. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2010.00235.x Wolff, Kristina B. 2011. “Panic in the ER: Maternal Drug Use, the Right to Bodily Integrity, Privacy, and Informed Consent.” Politics & Policy 39 (5): 679‐714. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2011.00313.x

Hostile Sexism and Abortion Attitudes in Contemporary American Public Opinion

“…The pro-woman frame “situates abortion as inherently harmful for women—both psychologically and physically—and insists that women deserve better than abortion” (Roberti 2021, 207). The laws treat “women as an uninformed group in need of protection from their own ignorance and the practices of abortion providers” (Doan and Schwarz 2020, 6). By promoting “regulatory abortion bills that ‘educate’ women about abortion or protect them from potential harm of abortion, anti-abortion lawmakers may claim they are advocates for women” (Roberti 2021, 207).…”

Abortion as a Public Health Risk in COVID-19 Antiabortion Legislation

“…;Doan and Schwarz 2020;Leslie 2010;Roberti 2021). However, white people who get abortions maintain legitimacy within anti-abortion discourses if the fetus is medically identified as having disabilities(McKinney 2019).…”

“…However, white people who get abortions maintain legitimacy within anti-abortion discourses if the fetus is medically identified as having disabilities(McKinney 2019). Conversely, anti-abortion discourses construct pregnant people of color who get abortions as a danger to their fetus and their community, the perpetrator, rather than the victim, of a crime(Doan and Schwarz 2020). For example, anti-abortion billboard campaigns in Atlanta and Cincinnati misrepresented Black people who get abortions as victimized women who are intentionally committing genocide against their community(Luna 2018;Norwood 2021).…”

The Kansas abortion vote shows the loudest voices in this debate are not representative ones

“…The political and social consequences of these changes have resulted in the enactment of restrictive anti-abortion policies that have increased state surveillance of women and abortion providers and fuelled cultural stigma,12 while simultaneously silencing supporters of abortion rights. Despite anti-abortion activists’ success in driving abortion policy to the ideological right, however, there has not been a corollary change in public opinion.…”