Thoughts on the Abortion Taboo: Displacement of a Failing Incest Taboo?

AbstractThe author suggests reading the forces culminating in the Dobbs’ decision and the dismantling of Roe v. Wade as the expression of an “abortion taboo,” which represents patriarchy’s refusal to concede to—and its failure to achieve—the incest taboo. The incest taboo, in turn, reflects a weakened paternal law, the failure of which pivots on an archaic and pervasive repudiation of the non-unitary feminine. The abortion taboo performs the labor of annulling (sexed/feminine) difference, on the manifest level advocating reproduction and the life of the unborn, while—latently—insisting on the reproduction of the (White-hetero-masculinist) same, thus reaffirming incestuous relations and their frozen temporality. This essay highlights the signifying and politically liberatory potential of the vaginal, which introduces uncanny contradiction and is disruptive of patriarchal sameness, as well as bearing accountability to a law beyond the paternal: feminine law.Keywords: abortionincest taboopaternal lawfeminine lawvaginalfetus AcknowledgmentsThe author expresses her gratitude to Meredith Darcy for shepherding this essay, and to Helena Vissing and Ali Shames Dawson, for their generous and substantive editorial contributions.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 In the case of a recently advanced “Prenatal Equal Protection Act” in South Carolina, all accomplices who “conspire” for an abortion would be equally liable of homicide (Zivot, Citation2023).Additional informationNotes on contributorsJill GentileJill Gentile, Ph.D., is clinical adjunct associate professor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, associate editor for Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Studies in Gender and Sexuality, and the author of Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire, with Michael Macrone (Karnac, 2016). She received the 2017 Gradiva Award for her essay “What is special about speech?” and the 2020 Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JAPA) prize for “Time may change us: The strange temporalities, novel paradoxes, and democratic imaginaries of a pandemic.” She practices in New York City and hosts online clinical study groups.