The overlap of the political and aesthetic languages of abortion in the United States often seems to be nearly total: American novels, films, television shows, and other media frequently struggle to articulate abortion stories in terms beyond the vocabulary of ‘life’ and ‘choice.’ While these discursive conventions may seem inevitable, they are highly localized in time and place, and as Reproductive Justice advocates have argued, these conventions are accompanied by significant costs. In “Beyond Pro-Choice versus Pro-Life: Women of Color and Reproductive Justice,” Andrea Smith explains that the “the pro-life versus pro-choice paradigm” “reifies and masks the structures of white supremacy and capitalism that undergird the reproductive choices that women make.” This panel is interested in investigating how comparative readings of abortion narratives can reveal the boundaries and limitations of our national, political, and artistic traditions and discourses and offer us opportunities to imagine alternatives.

This panel is interested in excavating and investigating aesthetic representations of abortion that refuse, revise, or otherwise reconsider the discursive contexts in which they are created. We seek to consider the work of artists who grapple with the (limitations of) abortion discourse in their artistic, cultural, and national contexts, as well as those whose work--existing in another time and place--can shed light on the discursive limitations of the ‘here’ and ‘now.’  

We welcome papers that address, but are not limited to, the following questions: 

• How has the concept of ‘boundary-crossing’ (of national boundaries, of temporal boundaries, of generic/artistic boundaries) shown up in literary representations of abortion? 
• How can literature and other art forms revise and reconsider our political languages for abortion? 
• What can those advocating for abortion liberation learn by looking beyond their specific national/cultural contexts? 
• What unites literary representations of abortions across national contexts? What varies? 
• How can turning to other times and places reveal the limitations of our current discursive terrain? How can this work offer alternative languages for abortion? 
• How does abortion as a fact and lived experience expose the boundaries and limitations of conventional narrative forms?