I'm posting this well-intentioned but very poorly executed article for folks to think through. I'm all for honest dialogue but such dialogue needs to start from a point of honest representation about the past and present of abortion provision. https://twitter.com/CaitlinPacific/status/1194227352332464130

To get at a point where a conversation can be had, the actual positions of folks who support or oppose reproductive choice should be described with nuance and accuracy in their specificity. This article caricatures pro- and anti-choice arguments and presents them as unchanging.

Full disclosure: Caitlin Flanagan contacted me in June of this year for an interview after I posted a thread about Lysol. I agreed to the interview. She never followed up.
https://twitter.com/1gillianfrank1/status/1138115276162174977?s=20

The Atlantic then contacted me for my Lysol images, which I shared with them. I asked for credit for my research assistance. I never got it.

Had Caitlin taken the time to speak with me, I would have happily described the complexity and history of arguments for and against abortion access and how these changed over time.

I would have told her that her gross conflation of a fetal image with a human being has a history and pointed her to a broad and deep scholarship that explains the power of fetal images and how these have been embedded in changing religious and health discourses since the 60s.

And I would have noted that today's visual arguments are effective because of the ways in which we have been taught to see fetal life over time and because of the ways in which the images are themselves carefully constructed. There's a whole literature on this question.

Importantly: When the greatest number of women were using Lysol as an abortificant or contraceptive, opponents of abortion did not deploy fetal imagery. They deployed religious arguments. More often, they used psychological arguments about women failing to achieve motherhood.

These histories of anti-abortion thought matter because they inform how opponents of abortion represent and have taught us to *see* and *value* the fetus.

I would have underlined that abortion access and reproductive justice arguments for the most part don't and haven't glibly trivialized the choice to terminate a pregnancy. Any serious engagement with them would talk about the careful and considered ways in which women CHOOSE.

And I would have noted that while the history of physically mutilated and dead women continues to haunt (and rightly so!) the arguments for choice, this angle of vision is just one of many arguments for access.

So yes, let's have a real, careful, and considered debate that recognizes the varied positions of supporters and opponents of abortion provision.

Also: @YAppelbaum -- if you ever want actual historians of abortion and reproductive politics to contribute to the Atlantic, hit me up. I can put you in touch with a whole bunch of smart folks who know their facts.