Rhetoric and abortion histories

Mary E Fissell, The Lancet, Volume 407, Issue 10527
January 31, 2026

In June, 2022, the US Supreme Court decision Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization ended five decades of legal abortion access in the country. Now about half of the 50 US states severely limit or ban abortion. Tragically, those states have seen a spate of preventable deaths from pregnancy complications for which abortion is usually the standard of care. Scholars in a range of disciplines are looking again at the history of abortion, trying to understand past events and their legacies.

In Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History, Emily Winderman examines the phrase back-alley abortion to denote the bad old days when almost all abortions in the USA were performed illegally. A researcher of the rhetoric of medicine and health, her book combines technical analyses of language and historical research, including a prehistory of purity dialogues; media treatments of specific abortion scandals; and legal cases. Analysis of this rhetoric is valuable as abortion debates continue to be sites of contest over language. Winderman argues that rhetoric about back-alley abortion connects “individual embodied experiences, history, and public memory”.

Continued: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(26)00155-8/fulltext?rss=yes

31.01.2026

abortion book

Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History

Emily Winderman

Rhetoric and abortion histories

The International Movement Behind Anti-Abortion Activism

It’s fueled by racism, says Professor Carol Mason in her new book.

Eleanor J. Bader
Jun 12, 2025

In From the Clinics to the Capitol: How Opposing Abortion Became Insurrectionary, Carol Mason, a professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Kentucky, draws a through line that connects both domestic and international anti-abortion activism to an ascendant network of white supremacist, Christian nationalist and authoritarian movements.

It’s a scary read, grounded in Mason’s three decades of attendance at rightwing events and perusal of scores of books, articles and pamphlets penned by anti-abortion conservatives. Her goal? To understand the ideology and motivating factors that have propelled the movement for the past half century.

Continued: https://indypendent.org/2025/06/the-international-movement-behind-anti-abortion-activism/

‘You are not alone, abortions are more common than you think’

Maya (24) got pregnant by a classmate while pursuing a Bachelor’s in Spanish Language & Culture at UU. She was not ready to have a child and chose to have an abortion. Her story is far from uncommon. Recently, Maya collaborated with writer Diet Groothuis, also a UU graduate, on a young adult novel about the topic. “It’s about time abortion stops being a taboo subject.”

By Marjorie van Elven
April 9, 2025

Three years ago, then UU student Maya decided to stop taking the pill. “I had been taking it since I was 16 and wondered who I was without those hormones,” she recollects. One year later, she got pregnant by a guy in her class, whom she was casually dating. He didn't want to use a condom, and she didn’t use any other contraceptives, such as an IUD. She took the morning-after pill after their first sexual encounter and then got started on the birth control pill again when her period came. A little while later, she found out she was pregnant.

Continued: https://dub.uu.nl/en/depth/you-are-not-alone-abortions-are-more-common-you-think

09.04.2025