The Dobbs Leak and Reproductive Justice

Abstract

OnMay 3, 2022, Emily concluded a first-year seminar on Reproductive Justice (hereafter RJ). The class brainstormed rhetorical practices that might enable and preclude meaningful coalition in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s anticipated overturn. The same day, Atilla’s rhetorical theory class reviewed “real” and “manufactured” instances of leaking. That evening, Politico published the leaked Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health draft decision. Although Alito’s leaked draft was a sensitizing moment for some, RJ activists and attorneys had anticipated the decision. Invalidating Constitutionally guaranteed rights to abortion and privacy, the leak staged an attack on stare decisis, confirmed in June with Justice Thomas’s insistence that the Court revisit other Roe-backed decisions like Obergefell v. Hodges. While many claimed the leak was unprecedented, two Roe v. Wade-related leaks occurred in the 1970s. Whereas the June 24, 2022 Dobbs decision officially overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, this essay considers the rhetorical significance of the leak. Leaks signify a dual transgressive fluidity, in the sense that information or bodily contaminants (e.g., blood, saliva) seep – both pleasurably and dangerously – across boundaries that have become porous. The body’s inherent ‘leakiness’ also means that embodied and gendered metaphors are a readily available shorthand for leaks that circumvent institutional bodies, like the Supreme Court. The Dobbs leak stages this situation: a fluid movement of information that transgressed an institutional boundary. However, given the impossibility of metaphorically suturing the institutional body by staunching the flow of information, many pundits channeled the loss of control brought on by the leak into a different bodily register. By prioritizing biologically sexed “women,” these commentors restricted coalitional language that affirmed gender fluidity and denied the personhood of the transgender and non-binary pregnant bodies also affected by Dobbs. As we argue, pundits rhetorically “sutured” the Dobbs v. Jackson leak by elevating “women” as the centralizing term for post-Roe coalitional identifications. By excluding abortion’s relevance to the more gender-fluid coalition of pregnant people, these responses also eschewed a more comprehensive RJ framework needed for future fights toward reproductive freedom. Our forum contribution traces the regressively gendered framings of the Dobbs leak in public discourse. We note especially how gender-suturing responses pre-emptively limited a broader abortion coalition. The RJ framework helps to anticipate future alignments between anti-abortion activists and trans-exclusionary feminists. We close by considering leaky coalitions that highlight the necessity of broader reproductive boundaries.