2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

This panel, consisting of a historian, an English professor with a background in abortion counseling, and a women's studies professor, will explore the concept of danger talk within the abortion care movement. With the rise of the anti-abortion movement following Roe v. Wade, anti-abortion activists spent the 1980s redefining the fetus into a baby and the abortion provider into a murderer. Anti-abortion activists highlighted the gruesome nature of abortion, focusing on the death of the fetus and in the process stigmatizing abortion.

Anti-abortion activists exploited the ambivalence that many abortion providers felt about abortion procedures at more advanced gestational stages. Fearing their words used against them, abortion providers had no space in which to discuss the reasons why -- despite their conflicted feelings about the procedures -- they sought to continue providing these procedures. Silenced, abortion providers retreated, closely followed by women whose guilt about seeking abortions grew as abortion became increasingly stigmatized.

The presentations analyze

1. the history of silencing abortion providers and the impact this silencing had on the provision of abortion care and the larger discussion surrounding legal abortion

2. the discourse surrounding the fetus in discussions of the so-called “partial birth abortion” ban

3. the impact which danger talk – providers attempts to break the silence – has had on the provision of abortion care and the pro-choice movement as a whole.