Toward reproductive justice rhetorics of care: state senator Jen Jordan’s dissent of Georgia’s heartbeat bill

Abstract

ABSTRACTAs we emerge into a post-Roe landscape spurred by state-level “heartbeat bills,” the stakes are high for rhetorical scholars to identify rhetorical topoi that have the capacity to intervene in legislative acts of reproductive injustice. Already, feminist rhetorical scholars have determined the rhetorical limits of topoi derived from legal, medical, and frameworks. Thus, I build upon Kelly Pender’s “rhetoric of care” to theorize what I name reproductive justice rhetorics of care, rhetorical topoi that can advance reproductive justice (RJ). Importantly, I view RJ as a contingent telos – not an analytic – to which both radical (protest) and reform (institutional) rhetoric can contribute. I argue that Georgia state Senator Jen Jordan’s dissent of HB 481, Georgia’s heartbeat bill, offers three RJ rhetorics of care from within the constraints of institutional dissent: women as the fiduciaries of life, reproduction as an embodied process, and mother – reclaimed and reframed. This analysis underscores the importance of identifying the rhetorical strategies invoked by state legislators to challenge reproductive injustice, given that abortion access will now be controlled by states post-Dobbs. Further, my analytical approach to finding topoi that move toward a contingent telos has implications for additional justice-oriented movements.KEYWORDS: Reproductive justiceabortion rhetoricrhetorics of careheartbeat billsdissent AcknowledgmentsThank you to Stacey K. Sowards and two anonymous reviewers, as well as my advisor, Belinda A. Stillion Southard, and Celeste M. Condit for their thoughtful, supportive feedback and guidance in this essay’s development. Feedback from Kelly E. Happe and Roger Stahl, as well as Ray Bailey, Christina Deka, Carly Fabian, Brittany Knutson, and Nathan Rothenbaum, was incredibly helpful. Kesha James, Nick Lepp, and Alex Morales also read and provided invaluable feedback for countless iterations of this essay. The 2022 NCA DHS group led by Josh Gunn, Jade C. Huell, and Chuck Morris offered a supportive space to improve this piece in its more final stages. Finally, I thank my late father, Ken Downing, and my mother, Greer Downing, for encouraging and supporting my activist commitments.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward, “Supreme Court Has Voted to Overturn Abortion Rights, Draft Opinion Shows,” Politico, May 2, 2022.2 Abigail Abrams, “These States Are Set to Ban Abortion If Roe v. Wade Is Overturned,” Time, May 3, 2022.3 Anne Ryman and Matt Wynn, “For Anti-Abortion Activists, Success of ‘Heartbeat’ Bills Was 10 Years in the Making,” The Center for Public Integrity, June 20, 2019.4 Bill Rankin, “Digging Deeper: Could Georgia Abortion Law Challenge Roe v. Wade?” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 26, 2019.5 Heartbeat bills were first drafted by Faith2Action’s founder, Janet Porter, who was instrumental in passing the first “Partial-Birth Abortion Ban” in the US The organization website’s homepage includes a section that allows users to “download model bills for use in your state.” f2a.org.6 Julie Carr Smyth, “Explainer: Abortion Landscape under State ‘Heartbeat’ Laws,” AP News, June 29, 2022.7 Clarissa-Jan Yim, “Abortion Providers Don’t Have Time to Be Surprised by the Leak. They’re Busy Preparing for a Post-Roe World,” Buzzfeed News, May 3, 2022.8 Hattie Lindert, “Protests Erupt across the Nation Ahead of Expected Roe v. Wade Reversal by Supreme Court,” People, May 14, 2022.9 Stephanie Allen, “‘The People v. SCOTUS:’ More than Just Roe:’ July 4th Abortion-Rights Rally Planned in Athens,” Athens Banner-Herald, July 1, 2022.10 Martina Essert, “Protests Continue in Athens Following Supreme Court Decisions,” The Red and Black, July 4, 2022.11 I contributed to this coalitional effort as both a member of the all-employee union, United Campus Workers of Georgia, and board member of The Georgia Feminist.12 Aliyah Chavez, “Supreme Court Could Halt Access to Safe Abortions, Indigenous Activists Say,” Navajo-Hopi Observer, May 10, 2022. Emphasis mine.13 Dorothy Roberts, “Reproductive Justice, Not Just Rights.” Dissent 62, no. 4 (2015): 79.14 Kathleen M. de Onís, “Lost in Translation: Challenging (White, Monolingual Feminism’s) with Justicia Reproductiva,” Women’s Studies in Communication 38, no. 1 (2015): 4.15 Loretta J. Ross, “Reproductive Justice as Intersectional Feminist Activism,” Souls 19, no. 3 (2017): 290.16 Loretta Ross, Erika Derkas, Whitney Peoples, Lynn Roberts, and Pamela Bridgewater, eds., Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundation, Theory, Practice, Critique (Feminist Press: CUNY, 2017), 15.17 “Home,” Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, apirh.org.18 Ross et al. Radical Reproductive Justice, 14.19 Rachelle Joy Chadwick, “Visceral Acts: Gestationality as Feminist Figuration,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 48, no. 1 (2022): 229–55. Chadwick advances a theory of gestationality to problematize “reproduction.” I maintain reproductive justice as a productive challenge to the pro-life/pro-choice dichotomy but emphasize gestational labor in conversation with their thought-provoking work.20 Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (Vintage, 2014), 4–5.21 Josue David Cisneros, “Free to Move, Free to Stay, Free to Return: Border Rhetorics and a Commitment to Telos,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 18, no. 1 (2021): 94.22 Kent A. Ono and John M. Sloop, “Commitment to Telos – A Sustained Critical Rhetoric,” Communication Monographs 59, no. 1 (1992): 48.23 Robert S. Cathcart, “Movements: Confrontation as Rhetorical Form,” Southern Communication Journal 43, no. 3 (1978): 239. I disagree with Cathcart’s claim that “radical” and “reform” movements are not on a continuum but separate altogether.24 Celeste Condit, “Rhetorical Strategies for Retrieving Abortion Rights,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 108, no. 4 (2022): 442.25 Robert L. Ivie argues that protest (radical) and dissent (reform) rhetorics should be understood as “overlapping discourses.” See “Enabling Democratic Dissent,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (2015): 53.26 Kelly Pender, Being at Genetic Risk: Toward a Rhetoric of Care (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018), 114.27 Jordan is pronounced JER-duhn.28 Greg Bluestein, “Kemp Vows to Outdo Mississippi and Sign Nation’s ‘Toughest’ Abortion Law,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 20, 2018.29 At the time of revising this essay, I filed my Georgia taxes online and was prompted to answer whether I’d been pregnant in 2022, in which case I may have qualified for tax credits under HB 481.30 Kate Smith, “Georgia ‘Heartbeat’ Abortion Bill Could Join the Legal Fight to Overturn Roe v. Wade,” CBS News, April 3, 2019.31 Myrydd Wells, “Hollywood’s (Threatened) Boycott, Explained,” Atlanta Magazine, June 3, 2019.32 Catherine Kim, “The #StayandFight Coalition Urges Hollywood to Reconsider Boycotting Georgia,” Vox, June 5, 2019.33 “‘Heartbeat Bill’ Senate Debate Continued,” Fox 5 Atlanta, March 22, 2019.34 Morgan Gstalter, “Georgia Lawmaker’s Speech Goes Viral after ‘Heartbeat’ Abortion Bill Passes Legislature,” The Hill, March 30, 2019.35 Jim Galloway, “Jen Jordan’s Dissent to HB 481, the ‘Heartbeat’ Bill,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 22, 2019. I use the transcript in this article as a reference for all direct quotations from Jordan’s speech. All emphases mine.36 Kristine Frazeo, “Capitol Hill Lawmakers Weigh New Bill Banning Abortion at 20 Weeks,” ABC News, April 10, 2019.37 Celeste M. Condit, “Rhetoricians on Human Remaking and the Project of Genomics,” Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 1, no. 1–2 (2018): 26.38 Pender, Being at Genetic Risk, 113.39 Ivie, “Enabling,” 50–1.40 Maria Novotny, Lori Beth DeHertogh, Lora Arduser, Mark A. Hannah, Kimberly Harper, Stacey Pigg, Sheri Rysdam, Barbi Smyser-Fauble, Melissa Stone, and Shui-yin Sharon Yam, “Amplifying Rhetorics of Reproductive Justice within Rhetorics of Health and Medicine,” Rhetoric of Health & Medicine 5, no. 4 (2022): 374.41 “Visioning New Futures for Reproductive Justice,” SisterSong, https://www.sistersong.net/visioningnewfuturesforrj.42 Ross et al., Radical Reproductive Justice, 14.43 Tasha Dubriwny and Kate Siegfried, “Justifying Abortion: The Limits of Maternal Idealist Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 107, no. 2 (2021): 191.44 Katie L. Gibson, “The Rhetoric of Roe v. Wade: When the (Male) Doctor Knows Best,” Southern Communication Journal 73, no. 4 (2008): 319.45 Ibid., 323.46 Ibid., 319.47 Georgia General Assembly, HB 481, Bill Tracking, http://www.legis.ga.gov/Legislation/enUS/display/20192020/HB/481 Emphasis mine.48 Jeffrey Collins, “Abortion Ban Goes to S. Carolina House Floor for Big Fight,” AP News, August 16, 2022.49 Carole Stabile, “Shooting the Mother: Fetal Photography and the Politics of Disappearance,” in The Visible Woman: Imaging Technologies, Gender, and Science, eds. Paula Treichler, Lisa Cartwright, and Constance Penley (NYU Press, 1998), 172.50 Amanda Friz, “Technologies of the State: Transvaginal Ultrasounds and the Abortion Debate,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 21, no. 4 (2018): 652–3. Emphasis mine.51 Amanda Nell Edgar, “The Rhetoric of Auscultation: Corporeal Sounds, Mediated Bodies, and Abortion Rights,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 103, no. 4 (2017): 356–7.52 Robert Lea, “When Is a ‘Fetal Heartbeat’ Detected? Doctors Say Not at Six Weeks Despite Texas Ban,” Newsweek, September 3, 2021. Emphasis mine.53 From Karen Barad, I understand entanglement as a radical relationality through which all matter is intra-related and intra-active. See its uptake in rhetorical studies: Figures of Entanglement: Diffractive Readings of Barad, New Materialism, and Rhetorical Theory and Criticism, eds. Christopher N. Gamble and Joshua S. Hanan (Routledge, 2021); and Jen Talbot, “Flat Ontologies and Everyday Feminisms: Revisiting Personhood and Fetal Ultrasound Imaging” in Feminist Rhetorical Science Studies: Human Bodies, Posthumanist Worlds, eds. Amanda K. Booher and Julie Jung (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2018).54 Friz, “Technologies,” 661.55 Ibid., 643.56 Emma Ockerman, “So-Called ‘Heartbeat Bills’ Are a Lie, and Doctors Want You to Stop Calling Them That,” Vice, June 5, 2019.57 Jessica Glenza, “Doctors’ Organization: Calling Abortion Bans ‘Fetal Heartbeat Bills’ is Misleading,” The Guardian, June 5, 2019.58 Georgia General Assembly, HB 481, Emphasis mine.59 Julie Carr Smyth and Kimberlee Kruesi, “‘Fetal heartbeat’ in Abortion Laws Taps Emotion, Not Science,” AP News, May 14, 2021.60 Richard A. Cherwitz and Thomas J. Darwin, “Why the ‘Epistemic’ in Epistemic Rhetoric? The Paradox of Rhetoric as Performance,” Text and Performance Quarterly 15, no. 3 (1995): 197.61 Roni Caryn Rabin, “Abortion Opponents Hear a ‘Heartbeat.’ Most Experts Hear Something Else,” The New York Times, February 14, 2022.62 Jeannie Ludlow, “Sometimes, it’s a Child and a Choice: Toward an Embodied Abortion Praxis.” NWSA Journal 20, no. 1 (2008): 43. This approach may be read as a form of invitational rhetoric. See Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin, “Beyond Persuasion: A Proposal for an Invitational Rhetoric,” Communications Monographs 62, no. 1 (1995): 2–18.63 Ludlow, “Sometimes,” 46.64 Ibid., 43.65 Laura Briggs, “Reproductive Justice: Born Transnational,” Gender, Work & Organization, 29, no. 1 (2022): 3. See also, Virginia McCarver, “The Rhetoric of Choice and 21st-Century Feminism: Online Conversations about Work, Family, and Sarah Palin,” Women’s Studies in Communication 34, no. 1 (2011): 20–41; and Carly S. Woods, “Repunctuated Feminism: Marketing Menstrual Suppression through the Rhetoric of Choice,” Women’s Studies in Communication 36, no. 3 (2013): 267–87.66 Sara Clarke Caplan, “After Roe: Race, Reproduction, and Life at the Limit of Law,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 51 (2023): 123.67 de Onís, “Lost in Translation,” 6. Emphasis mine.68 Robin West, “From Choice to Reproductive Justice: De-Constitutionalizing Abortion Rights,” The Yale Law Journal 118, no. 7 (2009): 1411.69 Thia Cooper, “Race, Class, and Abortion: How Liberation Theology Enhances the Demand for Reproductive Justice,” Feminist Theology 24, no. 3 (2016): 228.70 Greta Gaard, “Reproductive Technology, or Reproductive Justice?: An Ecofeminist, Environmental Justice Perspective on the Rhetoric Of Choice,” Ethics & the Environment 15, no. 2 (2010): 113.71 See Leandra Hinojosa Hernandez and Sarah De Los Santos Upton, “Insider/Outsiders, Reproductive (In)justice, and the US–Mexico Border,” Health Communication 35, no. 8 (2020): 1046–50; Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz, “Speaking of Solidarity: Transnational Gestational Surrogacy and the Rhetorics of Reproductive (In)justice,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 34, no. 3 (2013): 126–63.72 Shui-yin Sharon Yam, “Visualizing Birth Stories from the Margin: Toward a Reproductive Justice Model of Rhetorical Analysis,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 50, no. 1 (2020): 32, 21.73 Shui-yin Sharon Yam and Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz, “Against Gender Essentialism: Reproductive Justice Doulas and Gender Inclusivity in Pregnancy and Birth Discourse,” Women’s Studies in Communication 46, no. 1 (2022): 4.74 Yam, “Visualizing,” 21.75 Condit, “Rhetoricians,” 22.76 Ibid., 22.77 Pender, Being at Genetic Risk, 116.78 Ibid., 106.79 Sara Hayden, “Lessons from the Baby Boon: ‘Family-friendly’ Policies and the Ethics of Justice and Care,” Women’s Studies in Communication 33, no. 2 (2010): 129. Emphasis mine.80 Pender, Being at Genetic Risk, 150.81 Ibid., 11. Pender’s approach does not fully take up John Muckelbauer’s notion of productive reading, precisely because she still identifies what is “lacking” in rhetorics, a move I find valuable here. See Muckelbauer’s work: “On Reading Differently through Foucault’s Resistance,” College English 63, no. 1 (2000): 71–94.82 Pender, Being at Genetic Risk, 144.83 Ibid., 114; Debra Hawhee, “Regarding History,” College Composition and Communication 51, no. 4 (2000): 658.84 Pender, Being at Genetic Risk, 114.85 Hawhee, “Regarding History,” 658.86 Ivie, “Enabling,” 50–1.87 John Louis Lucaites and Celeste Michelle Condit, “Reconstructing Culturetypal and Counter-Cultural Rhetorics in the Martyred Black Vision,” Communication Monographs 57, no. 1 (1990): 18.88 Yam, “Visualizing Birth,” 21.89 Kristan Poirot, “(Un)making Sex, Making Race: Nineteenth-Century Liberalism, Difference, and the Rhetoric of Elizabeth Cady Stanton,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 96, no. 2 (2010): 185–208.90 For a rich history of Christian rights-based language and their successes with abortion policy, see Andrew R. Lewis, The Rights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics: How Abortion Transformed the Culture Wars (Cambridge University Press, 2017).91 Greg Bluestein, “Georgia Governor Backs Bill to Ban Abortion If Roe v. Wade is Nixed,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 28, 2019. Emphasis mine.92 Ben Nadler, “Georgia’s Republican Gov. Kemp Signs 6-Week Abortion Ban,” PBS News Hour, May 7, 2019.93 Ibid.94 In contrast, Jewish people, for instance, typically believe that life does not begin until one’s first breath. Rachel Mikva, “When Does Life Begin? There’s More than One Religious View,” The Conversation, September 7, 2021.95 Dabney P. Evans and Subasri Narasimhan, “A Narrative Analysis of Anti-Abortion Testimony and Legislative Debate Related to Georgia’s Fetal ‘Heartbeat’ Abortion Ban,” Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters 28, no. 1 (2020): 218.96 Lucaites and Condit, “Reconstructing,” 18.97 Jennifer Rainey Marquez, “The Passion of Jen Jordan: How an Unlikely Politician Became the New Voice of Georgia’s Democratic Party,” Atlanta Magazine, February 11, 2020.98 Ibid.99 Ibid.100 Ibid.101 Ivie, “Enabling,” 50.102 The SuperPAC affiliated with the Family Research Council, a national conservative organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has named a hate group, is called the Faith Family Freedom Fund. https://www.faithfamilyfreedom.org/ Kemp spoke at an FRC-sponsored summit, “Pray Vote Stand.” https://prayvotestand.org/speakers.103 Alex Leary, “Trump Says It Was ‘Great Honor’ to Appoint Justices Who Voted to Overturn Roe,” The Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2022.104 Ludlow, “Sometimes,” 43.105 Ross et al., Radical Reproductive Justice, 13. Emphasis mine.106 Ludlow, “Sometimes,” 43, 46.107 Sophie Lewis, “Abortion Involves Killing – and That’s OK!” The Nation, June 22, 2022.108 This analysis may supplement social movement and protest-based embodiment by offering how institutional dissent may also advance a similar rhetorical strategy. Kevin Michael DeLuca, “Unruly Arguments: The Body Rhetoric of Earth First!, ACT UP, and Queer Nation,” Argumentation and Advocacy 36, no. 1 (1999): 9–21.109 Francesca Laguardia, “Pain that Only She Must Bear: On the Invisibility of Women in Judicial Abortion Rhetoric,” Journal of Law and the Biosciences 9, no. 1 (2022): 1.110 Stabile, “Shooting,” 191.111 This emphasis on embodied knowing harkens to abortion restrictions up to a point of “quickening,” which is defined by a pregnant person’s embodied knowledge of a fetus’s presence, rather than knowledge produced through medical apparatuses. Fredrik Svenaeus, “Phenomenology of Pregnancy and the Ethics of Abortion,” Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 21, no. 1 (2018): 77–87.112 Dubriwny and Siegfried, “Justifying Abortion,” 195.113 The entire field of gynecology and its racist origins are too dense to fully cover here, but too horrific not to mention. See Deirdre Cooper Owens, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017).114 “Miscarriage,” Mayo Clinic, https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pregnancy-loss-miscarriage/symptoms-causes/syc-20354298.115 Roberts, “Reproductive Justice,” 80.116 “Requirements for Ultrasound,” Guttmacher Institute, https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/requirements-ultrasound.117 Roberts, “Reproductive Justice,” 80.118 Elizabeth Armstrong-Mensah, Damilola Dada, Amber Bowers, Aruba Muhammad, and Chisom Nnoli, “Geographic, Health Care Access, Racial Discrimination, and Socioeconomic Determinants of Maternal Mortality in Georgia, United States,” International Journal of Maternal and Child Health and AIDS 10, no. 2 (2021): 278.119 Kimala Price, “What Is Reproductive Justice? How Women of Color Activists are Redefining the Pro-Choice Paradigm,” Meridians 19, no. S1 (2020): 341.120 Caplan, “After Roe,” 127.121 Ross, “Reproductive Justice,” 290.122 Stabile, “Shooting,” 172.123 Margot Sanger-Katz, Claire Cain Miller, and Quoctrung Bui, “Who Gets Abortions in America?” The New York Times, December 14, 2021. Emphasis mine.124 Celeste Michelle Condit, Decoding Abortion Rhetoric: Communicating Social Change (University of Illinois Press, 1994): 104.125 Ibid., 104.126 Dubriwny and Siegfried recently make a case against maternal rhetorics as “idealist,” reifying biological determinism. See “Justifying Abortion,” 192.127 Condit, Decoding, 104.128 Dubriwny and Siegfried, “Justifying,” 202.129 de Onís, “Reproductive Justice as Environmental Justice: Contexts, Coalitions, and Cautions,” in The Routledge Companion to Motherhood, eds. Lynn O'Brien Hallstein, Andrea O’Reilly, and Melinda Giles (London: Routledge, 2019), 497.130 Pender, Being at Genetic Risk, 144.131 Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 852 (1992).132 Dubriwny and Siegfield, “Justifying,” 192.133 Loretta Ross, “Conceptualizing Reproductive Justice Theory: A Manifesto for Activism,” in Radical Reproductive Justice, 190.134 Amber Johnson and Kesha Morant Williams, “‘The Most Dangerous Place for an African American Is in the Womb’: Reproductive Health Disparities and Anti-Abortion Rhetoric,” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 5, no. 3 (2015): 159, 151–2.135 Jamie Worsley, “OBGYN Deserts Grow in South Georgia,” WALB News, April 28, 2023.136 Roberts, “On Becoming and Being a Mother in Four Movements: An Intergeneration View Through a Reproductive Justice Lens,” in Radical Reproductive Justice, 133.137 As quoted in Ludlow, “Sometimes,” 44.138 Condit, “Rhetoricians,” 22.139 Adrian Horton, “‘It’s Much Bigger Than Abortion’: Five State Lawmakers Who Fought Against Six-Week Bans,” The Guardian, July 8, 2019.140 This footnote can be found on page 4 of SisterSong v Kemp. Retrieved from: https://reproductiverights.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ComplaintGA.pdf.141 For more scholarship that explicitly troubles the omission of trans and gender diverse individuals from abortion discourse and the lost opportunity for broader coalition building, see Emily Winderman and Atilla Hallsby, “The Dobbs Leak and Reproductive Justice,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 108, no. 4 (2022): 421–5.142 Condit, “Rhetoricians,” 22.143 Ivie, “Enabling Democratic Dissent,” 56.144 Condit, “Rhetorical Strategies,” 442–3.145 Bruno Latour, “Why Critique Has Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,” Critical Inquiry 30, no. 2 (2004).146 Condit, “Rhetoricians,” 22.147 Pender, Being at Genetic Risk, 114.148 Jen Jordan (@attorney_jen), October 2, 2021. https://twitter.com/attorney_jen/status/1444447942912380934 Emphasis mine.149 Condit, “Rhetorical Strategies,” 442.150 Will Bunch, “Cop City in Atlanta is the Future of America,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 22, 2023.151 R. J. Rico, “Atlanta Organizers Unveil Plan to Take ‘Cop City’ Fight to the Ballot Box,” PBS News Hour, June 7, 2023.152 For full video of the testimony, see “Atlanta City Council Meeting: June 5, 2023,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lhPeAPaAcQ.153 Pender, Being at Genetic Risk, 114.154 Condit, “Rhetorical Strategies,” 442.155 Heather Ashby, “Far-Right Extremism Is a Global Problem,” Foreign Policy, January 15, 2021.