Real men love babies: protest speech and masculinity at abortion clinics in the Southern United States

ABSTRACT

This article examines the politicized space outside the abortion clinic as a site where gender ideologies about male roles and responsibilities in abortion are contested, using anti-abortion protest rhetoric that targets men accompanying women. Protesters attempt to elicit reactions from men using gendered stereotypes, in hopes that men will change their minds about or prevent an abortion. Anti-abortion protest speech uses mixed messages about masculinity, strength, and fatherhood to shame male companions for their support of abortion. Protesters’ rhetoric constructs men as inherently responsible for preventing abortion, where only by leaving the clinic space can these men gain power, controlling their reproductive futures by controlling their female companion’s. However, men reacted in different ways to the words shouted by protesters: by ignoring them, agreeing with them, or occasionally by initiating physical or verbal altercations. I find that male companions often employ tropes of patriarchal masculinity within attempts to perform supportive masculinity in response to protest speech, while protesters simultaneously use patriarchal masculinity and contemporary gender ideologies on responsible fatherhood in attempts to prevent abortion. These conflicting rhetorical themes and diverse reactions are indicative of larger struggles in the U.S. pro-choice and pro-life movements about the role of men in abortion.

KEYWORDS:

• Abortion
• masculinity
• protest speech
• reproduction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Whitney Arey is a PhD candidate in Socio-Cultural Anthropology at Brown University. Her 18-month ethnographic study of abortion decision-making in North Carolina asks how interpersonal relationships impact the abortion experience within the politically contested abortion clinic space. She is currently a recipient of the Society for Family Planning Emerging Scholars Research Fellowship, and former recipient of the Brown Population Studies Training Center National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development T-32 Fellowship. She has presented this research at interdisciplinary forums at the American Anthropological Association Annual Conference, Albany Medical School Conference on Reproductive Ethics, Population Association of America Annual Conference. She is a current biannual contributor to Somatosphere, on how current issues are important topics for medical anthropological research.

Notes

1 Independent here means that the clinics were privately owned; independent clinics provide the majority of abortions in the U.S. (60%), and are often physically separate from other medical facilities, making them targets for anti-abortion direct-action advocacy.

2 Not all persons seeking abortions identify as women, including but not limited to trans- and non-binary persons as well as men. For the purposes of this article, I frequently refer to persons seeking abortions as women. The reason is that I focus on protesters’ rhetorical use of gender as a tool for intervention, regardless of how people may personally identify. Protest rhetoric uses a binary understanding of women as pregnant persons seeking abortions, and men as the ‘father’ or man involved in the pregnancy. This rhetorical binary can cause additional stigma for people seeking abortion services who do not identify as women at the clinic.

3 I also refer to people seeking abortions as ‘patients’ and people accompanying them as ‘companions,’ which are terms used by clinic staff. I do this when identifying separate roles at the clinic. While companions and patients are of varying gender identities, all companions mentioned in this article are men and all patients are women.

4 Anti-abortion activists engaging in direct action refer to themselves in a variety of ways: sidewalk counselors, street preachers, CPC employees, protesters, or pro-lifers. I’m using the term protesters throughout, in reference to the permit that persons are required to have if they engage in direct-action outside of an abortion clinic.

5 Population of the city where clinic A is located is approximately 58% white, 28% Black, and 11% Hispanic; clinic B is approximately 48% white, 41% Black, and 9% Hispanic (NC Population 2019).

6 The gender of all companions and speakers are male, unless otherwise noted.

7 90% of counties in N.C. do not have abortion facilities.

8 Crisis pregnancy centers are religiously-affiliated, non-profit organizations that seek to counsel women against having an abortion. They may provide basic services such as ultrasounds or pregnancy tests, but usually do not have medical staff or provide medical services.

9 This methodology was approved by the Brown University IRB.

10 The FACE Act prohibits the use of ‘threat of force to injure, intimidate or interfere with someone entering a healthcare facility.’

11 This software was used for managing qualitative data.

12 Fighting words were first defined by the U.S. Supreme Court in Chaplinsky v New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942). Furthermore, in Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989), the U.S. Supreme Court redefined the scope of the fighting words doctrine to mean words that are ‘a direct personal insult or an invitation to exchange fisticuffs.’

Additional information

Funding

The funding for this project was provided by The Society for Family Planning Emerging Scholars Award, Brown University Population Studies Training Center T32 HD007338, and internal funding from Brown University including the School of Public Health Nora Kahn Piore Award, Anthropology Department, and the Joukowsky Summer Research Award.