Medicalization and Naturalization: Understanding Abortion as a Naturecultural Phenomenon

This article offers a naturecultural intervention to the abortion literature, which characterizes abortion as a standard procedure, from the perspective of both biomedical and social scientific research. In contrast, by examining interviews with feminists and pro-choice people about their recent abortions (n=27) and my own experiences as an abortion counselor, I find that no singular “abortion” exists; rather, there are many embodied abortions. I discuss how participants negotiate medical and natural ideologies, arguing that these ideologies produce the conditions under which people come to experience abortion in the United States. I also discuss the material consequences of defining abortion as a standard event. I find that universalizing abortion leads to the underrepresentation of marginalized stories, a lack of personalized support, and racialized and classed disparities in who can achieve their desired biosocial state (“normal” or “natural”)