GESTATING TYRANNY: RELIGION AS A THROUGHLINE IN ABORTION STIGMATIZATION, EXCEPTIONALISM, AND CRIMINALIZATION IN THE U.S. FROM ROE TO DOBBS AND BEYOND

Abstract

In this dissertation, I address the sociology of abortion within the context of the United States from the Roe era through the Dobbs Supreme Court ruling and its immediate aftermath, considering the sociological and criminological implications of the removal of the federal government’s guarantee through the second trimester of pregnancy of a right to an abortion. In Chapter One, I develop a comprehensive theory of abortion destigmatization in four tenets. In tenet one, I address linguistic and conceptual shortcomings surrounding the phrase “abortion stigma.” In tenet two, I emphasize the fundamental necessity and utility of intersectionality for a theory of abortion destigmatization and preference reproductive justice frames over reproductive choice frames. In tenet three, I outline how dominant forms of abortion stigmas evidence biopower at work across the political spectrum, and in tenet four, I reconcile a symbolic-interactionist approach to stigma theorizing (in line with Goffman) with the social process-based approach to stigma theorizing (in line with Foucault) that Erica Millar recently argued abortion stigma research should emulate. I then discuss implications of the theory. In Chapter Two, I investigate the stigmatizing role of state biopolitical incursion into personal reproductive decisions, constructing a panel dataset from a variety of sources of state-level sociopolitical predictors, including abortion opposition strategies and policies, along with covariates that previous research leads me to expect would be associated with state abortion opposition. I estimate a hybrid (between- and within-effects) linear regression model predicting state-year abortion rates. Results suggest that a positive association exists between some formal mechanisms of state abortion opposition (biopower) and corresponding state abortion rates when comparing states in given years where such mechanisms were enacted with states in given years where no such mechanisms existed. I theorize that people facing pregnancies stigmatized by the sort of religio-political conservative rhetoric that is often consistent with state biopolitical abortion opposition tactics may choose abortion as a means of avoiding enduring stigmas associated with non-normative family formation and mothering/parenting scenarios. In Chapter Three, my co-authors and I investigate the mediating role of Christian nationalism, an ideology melding certain conservative religious views with beliefs about American civic life, on well-established political and religious predictors of opposition to legal abortion access across both social-sphere circumstances (poverty, desired family size, marital status) and physical-sphere circumstances (rape, life/health of mother, and fetal defects). We use a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach to mediation. Our SEM mediation model estimated that Christian nationalism played a strong mediating role in shaping opposition to legal abortion across circumstances. However, both the associations between traditional religio-political predictors and the mediation by Christian nationalism were weaker for opposition under physical-sphere circumstances. We consider whether these data suggest the norm of “abortion exceptionalism,” an approach to public policy making where abortion is held to a different (more stringent) standard than comparable procedures, has the counter-intuitive capacity to convince ardent abortion opponents to support legal abortion in some circumstances. Throughout this dissertation, I theoretically and empirically investigate the implications for gender equity, racial and social justice, and the sustainability of democratic governance that various social and legal barriers may have—namely, abortion stigmatization, exceptionalism, and criminalization—when implemented to curtail/control uterine-bearing people’s bodily autonomy.