Father Knows Best: “Protecting” Women through State Surveillance and Social Control in Anti‐Abortion Policy

Abstract

Drawing on a feminist surveillance and social control framework, we conduct a manifest and latent content analysis of anti‐abortion policies passed in the United States in either a state's House or Senate from 2010 to 2015 to systematically assess the scope, content, and implicit meaning of 282 anti‐abortion bills. We find that out of the 727 anti‐abortion measures contained in this legislation, 622 incorporate surveillance, and social control mechanisms that operate together to socially construct women as a dependent population in need of government protection on two fronts: protection for women and their “unborn,” and protection from abortion providers. Fusing together womanhood and motherhood, these policies essentialize motherhood, depicting women as an uninformed group in need of protection from their own ignorance and the practices of abortion providers who are constructed as an unethical group of health‐care practitioners.Related ArticlesHussey, Laura S. 2013. “Crisis Pregnancy Centers, Poverty, and the Expanding Frontiers of American Abortion Politics.”Politics & Policy41 (6): 985‐1011.https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12054Medoff, Marshall H. 2010. “State Abortion Policy and the Long‐Term Impact of Parental Involvement Laws.”Politics & Policy38 (2): 193‐221.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2010.00235.xWolff, Kristina B. 2011. “Panic in the ER: Maternal Drug Use, the Right to Bodily Integrity, Privacy, and Informed Consent.”Politics & Policy39 (5): 679‐714.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2011.00313.x