Googling for Abortion in the Rural United States Crisis Pregnancy Centers as Networked Misogyny
Main Article Content
Abstract
This project integrates Reproductive Justice (RJ) commitments with insights from networked misogyny to describe the digital coercion strategies of Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) for people living in rural areas in the United States. Abortion access is increasingly mediated by commercial search engines (Mejova et al., 2022). The authors analyzed public CPC marketing strategy documents against data from over three hundred search queries across seven states with large rural populations. Taking Google search results as rhetorical artifacts, data reveals that states with restrictive abortion laws empower CPC search result visibility in several ways. CPCs disproportionately impact people who are the most reliant on internet mediation for abortion access—a population sharing significant overlap with people living in abortion deserts in rural areas.
Article Details
References
experiences of abortion seekers.
References
Abrams, Abigail, & Bergengruen, Vera. (2022). Anti-abortion pregnancy centers are collecting data that could be weaponized against women. Time. https://time.com/6189528/anti-abortion-pregnancy-centers-collect-data-investigation/
Adams, Heather B. (2021). Teaching health justice: Centering reproduction. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 4(4), 475-496.
The Alliance: State Advocates for Women’s Rights and Gender Equality. (2022). Urgent brief: The CPC industry as a surveillance tool of the Post-Roe State. https://alliancestateadvocates.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/107/Alliance_CPC_Report_Feb2022_UrgentBrief2-10-22.pdf
Allsworth, Jenifer E. (2022). Telemedicine, medication abortion, and access after Roe v. Wade. American Journal of Public Health, 112(8), 1086-1088.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. (n.d.). Facts are important: Medication abortion “reversal” is not supported by science. https://www.acog.org/advocacy/facts-are-important/medication-abortion-reversal-is-not-supported-by-science
American Public Health Association (2011). Policy statement: Regulating disclosure of services and sponsorship of crisis pregnancy centers. https://www.apha.org/policies-and-advocacy/public-health-policy-statements/policy-database%E2%80%8C/2014/07/22/08/33/regulating-disclosure-of-services-and-sponsorship-of-crisis-pregnancy-centers
Banet-Weiser, Sarah, & Miltner, Kate M. (2016). #MasculinitySoFragile: Culture, structure, and networked misogyny. Feminist Media Studies, 16(1), 171-174.
Be Pro-Truth. (n.d.). ProTruthNY. Retrieved November 12, 2023, from https://www.protruthny.org/
Belluck, Pam. (2024, Feb. 22). Abortion shield laws: A new war between the states. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/health/abortion-shield-laws-telemedicine.html
Branum, Amy M., & Ahrens, Katherine A. (2017). Trends in timing of pregnancy awareness among US women. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 21, 715-726.
Bratich, Jack, & Banet-Weiser, Sarah. (2019). From pick-up artists to incels: Con(fidence) games, networked misogyny, and the failure of neoliberalism. International Journal of Communication, 13, 5003-5027.
Bridges, Khiara M. (2017). The poverty of privacy rights. Stanford University Press.
Bryant, Amy G., Narasimhan, Subasri, Bryant-Comstock, Katelyn, & Levi, Erika E. (2014). Crisis pregnancy center websites: Information, misinformation and disinformation. Contraception, 90(6), 601-605. 10.1016/j.contraception.2014.07.003.
Cartwright, Alice F., Karunaratne, Mihiri, Barr-Walker, Jill, Johns, Nicole E., & Upadhyay, Ushma D. (2018). Identifying national availability of abortion care and distance from major US cities: Systematic online search. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 20(5), e186.
Cartwright, Alice F., Tumlinson, Katherine, & Upadhyay, Ushma D. (2021). Pregnancy outcomes after exposure to crisis pregnancy centers among an abortion-seeking sample recruited online. PLOS One, 16(7), e0255152.
Center for Countering Digital Hate. (2023). Profiting from deceit: How Google profits from anti-choice ads distorting searches for reproductive healthcare. https://counterhate.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Profiting-from-Deceit-CCDH-FINAL.pdf
Center for Reproductive Rights. (n.d.) After Roe fell: Abortion laws by state. https://reproductiverights.org/maps/abortion-laws-by-state/
Choose Life Marketing. (2023). What we know about marketing a year after Dobbs. https://www.chooselifemarketing.com/resources/free-marketing-materials/
Crisis Pregnancy Centers–Data Graphics. (n.d.). National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy. https://ncrp.org/about-us/
Dodge, Blake, & Langley, Hugh. (2020, Sep. 29). Google’s secretive healthcare business wants to organize the world’s health information, but insiders describe how turf wars and trust issues are hamstringing the operation. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/google-health-strategy-identity-alphabet-flux-2020-9
Dubow, Sara. (2010). Ourselves unborn: A history of the fetus in modern America. Oxford University Press.
Ellingson, Laura L. (2009). Engaging crystallization in qualitative research: An introduction. Sage.
Fixmer-Oraiz, Natalie. (2019). Homeland maternity: US security culture and the new reproductive regime. University of Illinois Press.
Fixmer-Oraiz, Natalie. (2022). No going back: The struggle for a post-Roe reproductive justice. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 108(4), 426-430.
Fixmer-Oraiz, Natalie, & Murillo, Lina Maria. (2023). “The term ‘life’ should return to us”: Learning from Latin America's Green Wave. Women & Language, 46(1), 275-284.
Fletcher, Ruth. (2023). On chronolegality: Reproducing legal time with periodic abortion law. Queen Mary Law Research Paper, (402).
Foster, Diana Greene. (2020). The turnaway study: Ten years, a thousand women, and the consequences of having—or being denied—an abortion. Simon and Schuster.
Frasik, Christina, Jordan, Claire, McLeod, Corinne, & Flink-Bochacki, Rachel. (2023). A mystery client study of crisis pregnancy center practices in New York state. Contraception, 117, 36-38. 10.1016/j.contraception.2022.08.004
Galarneau, Charlene. (2013). Farm labor, reproductive justice: Migrant women farmworkers in the US. Health & Human Rights, 15, 144.
Ging, Debbie, & Siapera, Eugenia. (2018). Special issue on online misogyny. Feminist Media Studies, 18(4), 515-524.
Google Advertising Policies Help. (n.d.). About abortion certification ad disclosures. https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/9274988?hl=en
Graham, Rosie. (2022). Investigating Google’s search engine: Ethics, algorithms, and the machines built to read us. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Guendelman, Sylvia, Yon, Elena, Pleasants, Elizabeth, Hubbard, Alan, & Prata, Ndola. (2020). Shining the light on abortion: Drivers of online abortion searches across the United States in 2018. PLOS One, 15(5), e0231672.
Gurr, Barbara. (2014). Reproductive justice: The politics of health care for Native American women. Rutgers University Press.
Haugeberg, Karissa. (2017). Women against abortion: Inside the largest moral reform movement of the twentieth century. University of Illinois Press.
Hayden, Sara. (2019). The politics of motherhood: Maternal appeals in the public sphere. In Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, Andrea O’Reilly, & Melinda Giles (Eds.), The Routledge companion to motherhood (pp. 477-485). Routledge.
Heartbeat International. (2024). Next level center management solution. https://www.heartbeatinternational.org/next-level-supporter
Holland, Jennifer L. (2020). Tiny you: A western history of the anti-abortion movement. University of California Press.
Horowitch, Rose. (2023, Oct. 26). Dobbs’s confounding effect on abortion rates. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/10/post-roe-national-abortion-rates/675778/
Hovenkamp, Erik. (2023). The competitive effects of search engine defaults. SSRN. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4647211
Huq, Aziz Z., & Wexler, Rebecca. (2023). Digital privacy for reproductive choice in the post-Roe era. New York University Law Review, 98(2), 555–646.
Hutchens, Kendra. (2021). “Gummy Bears” and “Teddy Grahams”: Ultrasounds as religious biopower in Crisis Pregnancy Centers. Social Science & Medicine, 277.
Ingraham, Chris. (2014). Toward an algorithmic rhetoric. In Gustav Verhulsdonck & Marohang Limbu, Digital rhetoric and global literacies: Communication modes and digital practices in the networked world (pp 62-78.) IGI Global.
Johnsen, Maria. (2024). The search engine revolution: From past to present and beyond.
Johnson, Gavin P., Guadrón, Melissa, Hambrick, Keira, Hashlamon, Yanar, Koneval, Addison, & Teston, Christa. (2021). Responding to the investigative pivots of rhetoric research. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 51(5), 407-421. 10.1080/02773945.2021.1972130
Jones, Corinne. (2023). Search engine discourse analysis: How ‘shadowban’ affects policy. Information, Communication & Society, 27(5), 1-18.
Jones, Sarah. (2023, Dec. 14). The anti-abortion movement is anti-human. New York Magazine. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/12/kate-cox-and-the-inhumanity-of-the-anti-abortion-movement.html
Kavanaugh, Megan L., Jerman, Jenna, & Frohwirth, Lori. (2019). “It's not something you talk about really”: Information barriers encountered by women who travel long distances for abortion care. Contraception, 100(1), 79-84.
Kimport, Katrina. (2019). Pregnant women's experiences of crisis pregnancy centers: When abortion stigmatization succeeds and fails. Symbolic Interaction, 42(4), 618-639.
Kirk, Allyson. (2008, Apr. 1). Speaking out: Manipulated by a CPC. Rewire News Group. https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2008/04/01/speaking-out-manipulated-by-a-cpc/
Marwick, Alice & Robyn Caplan. (2018). Drinking male tears: Language, the manosphere, and networked harassment. Feminist Media Studies, 18(4), 543-559.
Massanari, Adrienne. (2017). #Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures. New Media & Society, 19(3), 329-346.
Mejova, Yelena, Gracyk, Tatiana, & Robertson, Ronald E. (2022). Googling for abortion: Search engine mediation of abortion accessibility in the United States. Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, arXiv:2202.11760.
Montoya, Melissa N., Judge-Golden, Colleen, & Swartz, Jonas J. (2022). The problems with crisis pregnancy centers: Reviewing the literature and identifying new directions for future research. International Journal of Women's Health, 757-763.
Murphy, Margi. (2019, Mar. 10). Dr Google will see you now: Search giant wants to cash in on your medical queries. the Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/03/10/google-sifting-one-billion-health-questions-day/
National Abortion Federation. (n.d.) Find a provider. https://prochoice.org/patients/find-a-provider/?fwp_country_search=united-states
Nation’s urban and rural populations shift following 2020 census. (2022, Dec. 29). U.S. Fed News Service, Including US State News. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/urban-rural-populations.html
Noble, Safiya U. (2018). Algorithms of oppression. New York University Press.
Novotny, Maria, DeHertogh, Lori Beth, Arduser, Lora, Hannah, Mark A., Harper, Kimberly, Pigg, Stacey, Rysdam, Sheri, Smyser-Fauble, Barbi, Stone, Melissa, & Yam, Shui-yin Sharon. (2022). Amplifying rhetorics of reproductive justice within rhetorics of health and medicine. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 5(4), 374-402.
Private Internet Access. (n.d.). What can a VPN hide. https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/what-is-vpn
Pruitt, Lisa R., & Vanegas, Marta R. (2015). Urbanormativity, spatial privilege, and judicial blind spots in abortion law. Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice, 30, 76.
Public opinion on abortion. (2022, May 17). Pew Research Center. Retrieved November 12, 2023, from https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion
Raymond, Elizabeth, Chong, Erica, Winikoff, Beverly, Platais, Ingrida, Mary, Meighan, Lotarevich, Tatyana, Castillo, Philicia W., Kaneshiro, Bliss, Tschann, Mary, Fontanilla, Tiana, Baldwin, Maureen, Schnyer, Ariela, Coplon, Leah, Mathieu, Nicole, Bednarek, Paula, Keady, Meghan, & Priegue, Esther. (2019). TelAbortion: Evaluation of a direct to patient telemedicine abortion service in the United States. Contraception, 100(3), 173-177.
Regan Shade, Leslie, & Werbin, Kenneth C. (2024). What Hath Dobbs Wrought? Abortion activism in precarious and punitive times. Journal of Gender Studies, 1-15.
Roberts, Dorothy E. (2015). Reproductive justice, not just rights. Dissent (New York), 62(4), 79-82. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/594006
Ross, Loretta J., & Solinger, Rickie. (2017). Reproductive Justice: An introduction. University of California Press. 10.1525/9780520963207-002
Rowland, Allison L. (2017). Zoetropes: Turning fetuses into humans at the national memorial for the unborn. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 47(1), 26-48.
Rowland, Allison L. (2023). Small dick problems: Masculine entitlement as rhetorical strategy. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 109(1), 26-47.
Sherman, Justin. (2022, Sep. 19). The data broker caught running anti-abortion ads–to people sitting in clinics. Lawfare. https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/data-broker-caught-running-anti-abortion-ads%E2%80%94-people-sitting-clinics
Smith, Ellie, Sundstrom, Beth, & DeMaria, Andrea L. (2019). “Nobody ever asks me:” A reproductive justice approach to rural health disparities. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 19(1), 78-103. 10.1111/asap.12174
Statz, Michele, & Pruitt, Lisa R. (2019). To recognize the tyranny of distance: A spatial reading of Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 51(5), 1106-1127.
Stone, Melissa, & Beare, Zachary. (2020). Technical Rhetorics and Reproductive Justice, Reproductive Rights, and Reproductive Health. Reflections, 20(2), 19-25.
Swartzendruber, Andrea, & Lambert, Danielle. (2020). A web-based geolocated directory of crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) in the United States: Description of CPC map methods and design features and analysis of baseline data. JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 6(1), e16726. doi:10.2196/16726
Thomsen, Carly. (2022). Animating and sustaining outrage: The place of crisis pregnancy centers in abortion justice. Human Geography, 15(3), 300–306. doi:10.1177/19427786221076154
Thomsen, Carly, Levitt, Zach, Gernon, Christopher, & Spencer, Penelope. (2023). Presence and absence: Crisis pregnancy centers and abortion facilities in the contemporary reproductive justice landscape. Human Geography, 16(1), 64-74.
Tripodi, Francesca Bolla. (2022). The propagandists’ playbook: How conservative elites manipulate search and threaten democracy. Yale University Press.
Tripodi, Francesca Bolla, & Dave, Aashka. (2023). Abortion near me? The implications of semantic media on accessing health information. Social Media + Society, 9(3), n.p. doi:20563051231195548
VanKooten, Crystal. (2016). Methodologies and methods for research in digital rhetoric. Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture, 17. https://www.enculturation.net/methodologies-and-methods-for-research-in-digital-rhetoric
Winderman, Emily, & Hallsby, Atilla. (2022). The Dobbs leak and reproductive justice. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 108(4), 421-425.
World Health Organization. (2012). Safe abortion: Technical and policy guidance for health systems (2nd edition). https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/70914/9789241548434_eng.pdf?sequence=1
Yam, Shui-yin Sharon. (2020). Visualizing birth stories from the margin: Toward a reproductive justice model of rhetorical analysis. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 50(1), 19-34.
Yeung, Karen. (2017). ‘Hypernudge’: Big Data as a mode of regulation by design. Information, Communication & Society, 20(1), 118-136.
Zakrzewski, Cat, Verma, Pranshu, and Parker, Claire. (2022, Jul. 3). Texts, web searches about abortion have been used to prosecute women. the Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/03/abortion-data-privacy-prosecution/
Zuboff, Shoshana. (2022). Surveillance capitalism or democracy? The death match of institutional orders and the politics of knowledge in our information civilization. Organization Theory, 3(3), n.p. doi:26317877221129290.