Melissa Huerta works on Latinx representations in contemporary popular culture. Her presentation will consider the representation of abortion on TV and theater/performance to answer some of these questions: Where are the Latina/x stories about abortion (care) or reproductive decisions beyond pregnancy and motherhood? How do these representations challenge traditional and stigmatized representations, pointing to more inclusive experiences? What do representations (or the lack thereof) on the small screen mean for Latina/x popular culture and stories? She will discuss several representations of Latina/x abortion narratives on the small screen to consider the dissonance in the political arena and within the lived experiences of women of color to argue for the importance of abortion-positive representations, especially for people of color and marginalized communities.

Heather Latimer’s presentation will explore why dystopian narratives have become so popular for representing abortion politics over the last five decades. Following Frederic Jameson, she will argue that Roe’s fall supports the idea that the dystopic genre is a form of realism. While anti-abortionists, and the Supreme Court, may wish to frame Roe’s fall as a “constitutional” matter, she argues that this is a culture war, and how we talk about abortion in this moment will help set the terms of the debate going forward. Her presentation will ask a related set of questions about using dystopia to represent abortion in a post-Roe world: As headlines declare that we now live in The Handmaid’s Tale, it is clear that the dystopian genre has become a touchstone for representing abortion. What are the effects of turning to dystopian tropes, themes and storylines to make sense of antiabortion laws and policies? What might this genre help us understand in this new moment of criminalization?

Karen Weingarten will focus on literature from the early twentieth century to consider an earlier moment when abortion was illegal in every American state. Abortion was outlawed in every American state by the late nineteenth century, but as is now well known, that doesn’t mean women didn’t regularly seek abortions. By the early twentieth century, writers increasingly incorporated abortion plot lines, especially in stories about illicit love affairs. While the coat hanger became a symbol of illegal abortion in the mid-twentieth century fight to legalize the procedure, many women—especially those with limited economic means—turned to abortion pills because a surgical abortion was often financially out of reach. This presentation will take a historical perspective to ask what we can learn from these earlier—often realist— representations of abortion, and how did representations of abortion in literature and popular culture contribute to how abortion came to be framed by the late twentieth century.

Each of the panelists has written about the relationship between abortion, literature, politics, and popular culture and is actively engaged with scholarship in the field. This panel draws on that scholarship to open a conversation with audience members about the challenges of writing and teaching about abortion in our current moment. Talking about abortion has long been difficult, in part because of the ways it intersects with racial, economic, and disability justice, and in part because of how the anti-abortion movement has framed it as a religious issue. Our panel will introduce audience members to how we’ve theorized the abortion debate in our writing, and how this post-Roe moment is also forcing us to rethink how we write and teach about abortion in a world where bodily autonomy is continually stripped away. Our papers will be no longer than ten minutes each in order to ensure that there is enough time for discussion with audience members.