Saying The Things We Cannot Say: Dangerous Conversations about the Fetal Body and the Partial Birth Abortion Ban

I categorize a set of dangerous conversations about abortion as "The Things We Cannot Say" (see Women's Studies Quarterly[Spring 2008]).   These are truths of abortion provision, widely recognized among abortion care workers, that remain invisible in the maintream prochoice movement in the US.  This paper examines how one type of "The Things We Cannot Say" -- conversations about the fetal body -- developed in resistance to abortion stigmatization during public attention to the so-called Partial Birth Abortion ("PBA") Ban, from 1995-2007.

In the mid-1990s, fetuses were everywhere.  I worked in a clinic, which meant that I saw fetuses both in our materials and on protesters' signs.  In the media, fetuses populated graphic depictions of intact D&E abortion, the subject of the "PBA" Ban.  These drawings presented a seemigly developed fetal body, decontextualized from the body that nurtured it, being victimized by medical hands in a gruesome procedure.

As an independent, feminist abortion clinic, our mission included educating patients and their support person about general reproductive health, as well as pregnancy and abortion, and empowering patients to define their own abortion experiences.  Responding to patients' interpretations of the "PBA" graphics, we independent clinicians developed a complicated clinic discourse of fetal development and the fetal body, presented in words and images that simultaneously honored our patients' varied perceptions of their fetuses and promoted destigmatization of abortion.

This paper proposes that these complex and sometimes ambivalent clinic discourses provide an excellent model for challenging antiabortion rights activism ad legislation today.