Genocide, surveillance, and babies: “embodied propaganda” and the anti-abortion to conspiracy pipeline

Abstract

ABSTRACT The judicial decision to overturn the federal right to abortion in the United States has profoundly influenced women across the country. Relying on 2,230 individual stories and over 500 posts on Instagram by anti-abortion activists, we investigate their discourse around abortion produced in a specific cultural moment—that of post-Roe America and a post-truth online society in which disinformation and conspiracy spread rampantly. This combined moment is particularly relevant given that people who can get pregnant are being marginalized and criminalized in American society at the same time that trust in experts and institutions is declining, thus troubling both institutional and feminist knowledge-production. Conceptually we draw on existing studies on embodied, feminist knowledge, intersectionality, populist expertise and conspiracy-believing, as well as gendered disinformation and conspiracy to show how (a) anti-abortion rhetoric devolves not only into disinformation but also conspiracy theories that are common among the alt-right and conservative online networks; (b) that the feedback loop among these communities is strong, and (c) that the anti-abortion movement on Instagram is experimenting with Gen Z rhetoric. We introduce and demonstrate the concept of embodied propaganda to capture the phenomenon of co-opting the experiences of marginalized groups in society to manipulate public opinion.