Revocability, Exception, Disqualification

Abstract

The Dobbs decision revoking the constitutional legality of abortion in the United States was widely characterized as a use of raw power. That gives rise to the questions: What kind of power is in question? How does the post-Dobbs moment encapsulate a number of hinges between formations of power characterized in post-Foucauldian theory? How is fluency in the combinations of power at work in the Dobbs decision and aftermath enhanced by a vocabulary of such hinges, including “revocability,” “exception,” and “disqualification”? The article opens up the relationship between rights-bearing and the differential distribution of expectations (for some) that rights be accompanied by particular kinds of good conduct from which others are exempt. Asking how and why abortion has served as a device for setting aside a broad range of rights, the article gives special attention to “exemption” and “self-exemption” in the reproductive governance of abortion.