Back from the Brink: The Narratives of Pro-life and Pro-choice Politics

Mailman Auditorium, Mailman Hollywood Building

This conversation will explore the myth of difference invoked in the literature of prochoice and prolife movements. From highlighting the welfare of the unborn and born to claims about women’s mental health needs and arguments regarding coercion and liberty, narratives on each side fight to tell a definitive story about the abortion experience. The rhetoric of each side presents striking similarities, but more importantly, the stories they at times threaten to obfuscate confess surprisingly similar personal stakes and experiences as well. This observation has significant implications regarding how the rhetorical maneuvers that result in legislation for each side ultimately create, utilize, and distort the narrativized experiences of each side, or in other words, it promises to reveal the shared concerns of actors who would otherwise identify each other as “movement” and “countermovement” advocates. For this talk, specifically, we are examining how narrative elements cross boundaries.