Abstract
In October 2017, the stories of Jane Doe, Roe, and Poe, young women detained at a Texas immigration detention center run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) made national headlines. They were pregnant, undocumented immigrants who were denied access to abortion because the ORR argued that they were “not people for constitutional purposes.” Using rhetorical silence, paternalistic rhetoric, and dehumanizing rhetoric, ORR director Scott Lloyd had the ultimate power of definition that allowed him to rhetorically pathologize these women as undeserving of rights and health care. Tapping into cultural and historical discourses that treat abortion and immigration as pathological and measures of an afflicted society, Lloyd and ORR policy constituted a rhetoric of pathology that demonized these women for their “crimes” of illegal immigration, sex, and requesting abortion. Their stories and the rhetorical strategies used to justify their oppression are particularly important in the continued fight for women's bodily autonomy and immigrant rights in a time of heightened border security, deportation, and family separation.
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