Table Of Contenti
Representing Abortion
Representing Abortion analyses how artists, writers, performers, and activists make
abortion visible, audible, and palpable within contexts dominated by anti-a bortion
imagery centred on the fetus and the erasure of the pregnant person, challenging the
polarisation of conversations about abortion.
This book illuminates the manifold ways that abortion is depicted and narrated
by artists, performers, clinicians, writers, and activists. This representational work
offers nuanced and complex understandings of abortion, personally and politic-
ally. Analyses of such representations are urgently needed as access to abortion is
diminished and anti- abortion representations of the fetus continue to dominate the
cultural horizon for thinking about abortion. Expanding the frame of reference for
understanding abortion beyond the anti-a bortion use of the fetal image, contributors
to this collection push beyond narrow abstractions to examine representations of the
experience and procedure of abortion within grounded histories, politics, and social
contexts.
The collection is organised into sections around seeing (and not seeing) abortion;
fetal materiality; abortion storytelling and memoir; and representations for new
arguments. These themes cover a range of topics including abortion visibility, anti-
abortion discourse, pro-c hoice engagements with the fetus, personal experience, and
media representations. The analyses of such representations counteract anti- abortion
rhetoric, carving out space for new arguments for abortion that are more represen-
tative and inclusive and asking audiences to envision new ways to advocate for safe
abortion access through reproductive justice frameworks.
This is an innovative and challenging collection that will be of key interest for
scholars studying reproductive rights and reproductive justice, as well as women’s
and gender studies. Representing Abortion is organised to structure upper-y ear
undergraduate and graduate courses on reproductive rights and reproductive justice
in a new and engaging way.
Rachel Alpha Johnston Hurst is Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies
at St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Her research is concerned
with the relationships between power, embodiment, and (visual) culture, from the
perspectives of psychoanalysis and decolonial thought. She is author of Surface
Imaginations: Cosmetic Surgery, Photography, and Skin (2015) and co- editor of Skin,
Culture, and Psychoanalysis (2013). Her most recent essays have been published in
History of Photography, Feminist Studies, Configurations, and Body & Society.
ii
Interdisciplinary Research in Gender
Drag, Interperformance, and the Trouble with Queerness
Katie Horowitz
Re-writing Women as Victims
From Theory to Practice
Maria José Gámez Fuentes, Sonia Núñez Puente and
Emma Gómez Nicolau
Cultural Reflections of Medusa
The Shadow in the Glass
Jennifer Hedgecock
Representations of Working-Class Masculinities in Post-War British Culture
The Left Behind
Matthew Crowley
Gender and Sexual Fluidity in 20th Century Women Writers
Switching Desire and Identity
Lesley Graydon
Kathy Acker
Punk Writer
Margaret Henderson
Female Sexuality in Modernist Fiction
Literary Techniques for Making Women Artists
Elaine Wood
Classical Hollywood Cinema, Sexuality, and the Politics of the Face
Paul Morrison
Representing Abortion
Edited by Rachel Alpha Johnston Hurst
www.routledge.com/Interdisciplinary-Research-in-Gender/book-series/IRG
ii i
Representing Abortion
Edited by Rachel Alpha Johnston Hurst
iv
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Rachel Alpha Johnston Hurst;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Rachel Alpha Johnston Hurst to be identified as the author
of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Hurst, Rachel Alpha Johnston, 1977– editor.
Title: Representing abortion / edited by Rachel Alpha Johnston Hurst.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. |
Series: Interdisciplinary research in gender |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020022734 (print) | LCCN 2020022735 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367860417 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003016595 (paperback) |
ISBN 9780367540029 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Abortion. | Abortion in art. |
Abortion in literature. | Abortion in motion pictures.
Classification: LCC HQ767 .R357 2021 (print) |
LCC HQ767 (ebook) | DDC 362.1988/8—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022734
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022735
ISBN: 978- 0-3 67- 86041- 7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978- 1-0 03- 01659- 5 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Newgen Publishing UK
v
Contents
List of figures viii
List of contributors ix
Acknowledgements xiv
1 Representing abortion 1
RACHEL ALPHA JOHNSTON HURST
PART I
Seeing (and not seeing) abortion 15
2 Secrets 19
RACHEL MARIE-C RANE WILLIAMS
3 It’s a boy! borted: fetal bodies, graphic abortion, and
the option to look 49
JEANNIE LUDLOW
4 Museums and the material culture of abortion 61
MANON S. PARRY
5 Who’s late? Degrassi, abortion, history 75
MICHELE BYERS
PART II
Fetal materiality 87
6 Representing the cause: the strategic rebranding of the
anti- abortion movement in Canada 93
KELLY GORDON AND PAUL SAURETTE
vi
vi Contents
7 Visual realignment? The shifting visual terrains of
anti- abortion strategies in the Republic of Ireland 104
KATHERINE SIDE
8 Look like a provider: representing the materiality
of the fetus in abortion care work 119
LENA HANN AND JEANNIE LUDLOW
9 Dressing the Mizuko Jizō: materialising the aborted
fetus in Japan 131
AURORE YAMAGATA-M ONTOYA
10 Rattling your rage: humour, provocation, and
the SisterSerpents 142
CLAIRE L. KOVACS
PART III
Abortion storytelling and memoir 157
11 Abortion for beginners 161
T.L. COWAN
12 All politics are reproductive: abortion and environment
in Marianne Apostolides’ Deep Salt Water 166
HEATHER LATIMER
13 From compulsion to choice? The changing
representations of abortion in India 177
SUCHARITA SARKAR
14 Underground Women’s State: Polish struggles for
abortion rights 190
DAGMARA RODE
PART IV
Representations for new arguments 203
15 “What you do hurts all of us!”: when women confront
women through pro- life rhetoric 207
JENNIFER SCURO
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Contents vii
16 “This is how I was born on the operating table of an
abortion clinic”: reproductive decision- making and
Coatlicue State in Teatro Luna 221
MELISSA HUERTA
17 Abortion and the ideology of love in Kathy Acker’s
Blood and Guts in High School and Don Quixote,
Which Was a Dream 233
YOONHA SHIN
Index 244
viii
Figures
4.1 Example of a “floating fetus” as commonly found in
medical museums 64
4.2 Uterus perforated in an illegal abortion and the implement
used in the procedure 67
4.3 Image representing the kitchen table as the operating space
of an illegal abortion 70
7.1 I had NO idea… 106
7.2 Love Both: Emma Maloney, Rossa Maloney 108
7.3 Referendum campaigning 111
7.4 Love Boats logo 112
9.1 Raincoat Jizō 138
10.1 SisterSerpents, “Fuck a Fetus” poster, 1989. Photograph
and collage 145
10.2 SisterSerpents, “Fuck a Fetus” poster, installed on the
streets of Chicago, c.1989 146
10.3 SisterSerpents, installation photo of “Fetus wall” from
Rattle Your Rage at Chicago Filmmakers, 1990 149
10.4 SisterSerpents, installation of “Fetus wall” censored from
Rattle Your Rage at Chicago Filmmakers, 1990 151
13.1 #AbortTheStigma: normalising conversations around
abortion. Graphic by CREA and Youth Ki Awaaz (2015) 182
13.2 Palani’s Daughters. Wood sculpture by Navjvot Altaf, 1996 185
15.1 Left panel: me and the nurse as she brings me to recovery
chairs. Middle panel: a woman talks to me while we recover
from our procedures. Right panel: she asks me how I am
and tells me her story 208
15.2 Left panel: the woman who approached me. Right
panel: me, entering the car as the woman attempts to
hold the door open for me 209
15.3 “Precious One” fetus models featured in the documentary
Jackson, directed by Maisie Crow, 2016 212
15.4 Campaigners stage a protest to demand more liberal
abortion laws in Dublin, Ireland, March 8, 2017. The
protest sign reads, “Trust Women” 217
ix
Contributors
Michele Byers is Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Saint Mary’s
University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She has published widely in the areas
of television, media, youth culture, and identity and has held several
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grants for
the study of Canadian television. She is editor or co-e ditor of four edited
collections, including Growing Up Degrassi: Television, Identity and
Youth Cultures (2005).
T.L. Cowan is Assistant Professor of Media Studies (Digital Media Cultures)
in the Department of Arts, Culture, and Media and the Faculty of
Information at the University of Toronto. T.L.’s research/ creation focuses
on cultural and intellectual economies, networks, and methods of trans-
feminist and queer digital media and performance practices. She is
currently completing a monograph, Transmedial Drag and Other Cross-
Platform Cabaret Methods. T.L.’s performance practice draws from
cabaret, spoken word, costume-b ased and alter-e go performance, agit-
prop theatre, stand- up comedy, video and sound art, installation, and
intervention.
Kelly Gordon is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science
at McGill University. Her research focuses on North American party pol-
itics, and in particular the role that women and representations of gender
play in structuring conservative political persuasion in Canada and the
United States. Kelly’s book, The Changing Voice of the Anti-A bortion
Movement: The Rise of “Pro- Woman” Rhetoric in Canada and the
United States (2015, co- authored with Dr Paul Saurette), received several
academic awards, including the Canadian Political Science Association
(CPSA) 2016 Donald Smiley Prize for the best book published in the
field of Canadian politics and the American Political Science Association
(APSA) Lipset Award for making a significant contribution in the field
of Canadian political science. Her current book manuscript, tenta-
tively titled Gendering Political Persuasion: Gender, Victimhood, and
Conservative Activism and Politics in Canada, examines the rise of new
