"Doctors Don't Kill Babies! Monsters Do!": using performance and personal narrative to identify the U.S. Abortion Monster. Issue 1 (2nd January 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ellis, Cassidy D.
• Is Part Of: Text and performance quarterly. Volume 42:Issue 1(2022)
• Page Start: 67
• Page End: 82
• Publication Date: 2022-01-02
• Subjects: Abortion Monster -- monstrosity -- performative writing -- everyday life performance -- autoethnography; Oral communication -- Periodicals; Literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; 302.224205
• DOI: 10.1080/10462937.2021.2000631
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1046-2937

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This essay identifies a specific monster in U.S. American culture: the Abortion Monster. I demonstrate how abortion patients and providers are constructed as monstrous by anti-abortion rhetoric. I argue that anti-abortion rhetoric is not only about the decision to end or continue a pregnancy, rather it is a response to perceived deviation from performances of White heteropatriarchy. Abortion Monsters' rejection of hegemonic identity performances and/or their inability to embody such performances threatens and queerly reimagines heteronormative White supremacist norms. I demonstrate how performance scholarship is a space to explore the bodily imperatives and material implications of monstrosity in everyday life.