Settler colonial abortion: Cassidy Ellis, Saved Babies, Dead Doctors: Settler Colonial Anxiety and Strategic Rhetorics of/in the Anti-Abortion Cultural Narrative, PhD dissertation, University of New Mexico, 2023 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler colonial abortion: Cassidy Ellis, Saved Babies, Dead Doctors: Settler Colonial Anxiety and Strategic Rhetorics of/in the Anti-Abortion Cultural Narrative, PhD dissertation, University of New Mexico, 2023

27Oct23

Abstract: In this dissertation I identify and analyze the rhetoric that creates the anti-abortion cultural narrative and locate its toxic secrets by exposing the logics and ideologies the secrets obscure and sustain, and finally, ascertaining the strategic rhetorics that enable the narrative’s power and centrality. There are two primary arguments proposed in this dissertation. First, I argue that settler colonialism is the primary toxic secret nestled just beneath the surface of the anti-abortion cultural narrative. It is the secret that animates and sustains the narrative in service of maintaining settler colonial social order via control and maintenance of the population. Second, I argue that the anti-abortion campaign that burgeoned in the United States in the years following Roe v. Wade (1973) crafted this particular anti-abortion cultural narrative through three strategic rhetorics: 1) a (re)constituted concept of fetal personhood; 2) ideographic use of fetal imagery grounded in a Christian ethos; and 3) ideographic violence made possible through a reconceptualization of what “counts” as a violent act in the context of abortion. This dissertation also argues that the anti-abortion narrative operates in service of a larger settler colonial agenda, ultimately contributing to a settler colonial worldmaking project. I began this introduction discussing Alito’s opinion text because it is a prime example of how history, medical “facts,” socio-cultural discourses, and state power converge in narratives of reproduction. These narratives are not new, rather the Dobbs decision reminds that the heteropatriarchal White supremacist settler colonial state is working exactly as it’s meant to, privileging exactly those it was created to privilege. Alito’s ability to write the significance of pregnancy determination out of U.S. history and to construct pregnancy prevention as nonessential for “liberty” situates the anti-abortion cultural narrative within a colonial master narrative (or, ideology) that is concerned with maintaining and controlling the settler colonial population.

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