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Following the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in , Louisiana enacted a \"trigger law\" banning nearly all abortions. Attempts to reform existing restrictive legislation so as to allow for abortions under exceptions have been unsuccessful to date. This study aims to describe how abortion discourse is framed in public testimony around House Bill 346 in the 2023 Louisiana legislative session, which attempted to pass an abortion exception for pregnancy in the case of rape or incest. We conducted a conventional qualitative content analysis utilizing a rhetorical lens, using testimony transcripts from the May 10, 2023, Louisiana Administration of Criminal Justice Committee hearing. An iterative coding approach allowed us to categorize salient themes, language patterns, speaker characteristics, emotional tones, and rhetorical strategies. Demographic characteristics were ascribed to speakers based on perceived gender and race when not self-identified. Testimony analysis revealed four primary themes: (1) conflicting representations of abortion, (2) religion's role in shaping discourse, (3) humanization of fetuses vs. pregnant individuals, and (4) debate over available resources for survivors and children. Abortion is represented as being traumatic, adding to the trauma caused by sexual violence, while representing childbearing as healing from trauma. Being conceived as a result of sexual violence is used as an identity marker worthy of protection. Religious rhetoric permeates testimony both in support and in opposition to abortion exceptions, making a \"pro-life\" stance the starting point for debate. Lastly, we find evidence of dehumanization of survivors' and others' experience. The testimonies around HB346 expose deeply polarized discourse that reflects moral, religious, and ethical conflicts, as well as mismatched conversations that are unlikely to persuade opposing sides. Addressing these dissonant narratives requires nuanced advocacy strategies and resources to support effective testimony.

In the United States, maternal health inequities disproportionately affect Global Majority (e.g., Asian, Black, and Hispanic) populations. Despite a substantial body of research underscoring the influence of racism on these inequities, little research has examined how experiences of gendered racial microaggressions during pregnancy and birth impact racially and ethnically diverse Global Majority pregnant and birthing people in obstetric hospital settings. We evaluated the psychometric properties of an adapted version of Lewis & Neville’s Gendered Racial Microaggressions Scale, using data collected from 417 Global Majority birthing people. Findings from our study indicate that our adapted GRMS is a valid tool for assessing the experiences of gendered racial microaggressions in hospital-based obstetric care settings among Global Majority pregnant and birthing people whose preferred languages are English or Spanish. Item Response Theory (IRT) analysis demonstrated high construct validity of the adapted GRMS scale (Root Mean Square Error of Approximation = 0.1089 (95% CI 0.0921, 0.1263), Comparative Fit Index = 0.977, Standardized Root Mean Square Residual = 0.075, log-likelihood c2 = -85.6, df = 8). IRT analyses demonstrated that the unidimensional model was preferred to the bi-dimensional model as it was more interpretable, had lower AIC and BIC, and all items had large discrimination parameters onto a single factor (all discrimination parameters > 3.0). Given that we found similar response profiles among Black and Hispanic respondents, our Differential Item Functioning analyses support validity among Black, Hispanic, and Spanish-speaking birthing people. Inter-item correlations demonstrated adequate scale reliability, α = 0.97, and empirical reliability = 0.67. Pearsons correlations was used to assess the criterion validity of our adapted scale. Our scale’s total score was significantly and positively related to postpartum depression and anxiety. Researchers and practitioners should seek to address instances of gendered racial microaggressions in obstetric settings, as they are manifestations of systemic and interpersonal racism, and impact postpartum health.

This project explores Evangelical white women’s role within conservative social movements; I marshal a rhetorical reproductive justice lens to interrogate their participation in the pro-life movement in particular with specific attention to their deep-rooted racist beliefs and actions that have consequences for everyday reproductive healthcare. Within this dissertation, I dig deep into the history, lived experiences, and performances of white women’s involvement in conservative movements within the United States, focusing on the impact on contemporary reproductive politics. In interrogating these performances, I coin the term “spectacular surveillance,” which is a type of biopolitical surveillance that relies on emotion, femininity, and spectacular visuals to create a purposeful blockade of certain bodies and their access to healthcare, through rhetorics of shame, racism, and nationhood. Using the example of the pro-life movement specifically allows a small look into a larger problem surrounding conservative women’s emotionality, whiteness, and the consequences of the “invisible” activism of women in these movements for the nation itself and on the biopolitical sphere of the United States. Analyzing a rhetorical, ethnographic archive of white women’s Evangelical activism through this broader lens of reproductive justice conveys the historical stakes of the pro-life movement and contextualizes the spectacular surveillance of reproductive politics and bodies in the Unites States.

Commodity feminism, consuming specific products in order to be labeled as “feminist,” divides those who identify as women broadly because of the economic divisions and commodification of bodies that this type of feminism creates and disseminates to wider publics. In order to understand the way counterpublics work specifically in relation to a late capitalist society, I explore these issues of commodity feminism. Craftivists can be seen as an alternative, a resistant counterpublic, to commodity feminism as they work outside of the capitalist system while attempting to also work against the patriarchal system. In doing so, Craftivism acts as a counter to commodity feminism through eradicating the commodification of women’s bodies while connecting feminists and women in general who are often economically divided. By using the example of Craftivism, I aim to explicate the ways in which feminist counterpublics can take into account the economic issues that accompany oppressive patriarchal systems.

The FACE Act was signed by Bill Clinton in 1994 to guarantee access to abortion and reproductive health care protected by the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.