UCLA

“Terror at the Clinic: Remembering, Performing, and Confronting Antiabortion Terror at Independent Clinics” analyzes the obstacles, resiliencies, and support networks associated with independent abortion clinics. In the United States, more patients access abortion through independent clinics than through any other portal. With the overturning of Roe v. Wade and countless other barriers, independent clinics across the United States have become increasingly threatened, with many shuttering their doors. The many arms of the antiabortion movement are primarily responsible for this. For decades they have terrorized clinics—providers and patients alike— evoking fear, inflicting violence, and catalyzing abortion stigma. With the impending peril of independent abortion clinics and increased difficulty in accessing their services, understanding their challenges, strengths, and needs emerges as a top priority.Using my ethnographic engagement with the nonprofit organization Abortion Access Front (AAF) as an entryway, my research demonstrates how the antiabortion movement terrorizes abortion clinics, providers, patients, and their communities. Drawing from feminist and performance theory, it explores the many ways clinics respond to this terror. By examining the work of AAF, I demonstrate how an arts activist nonprofit organization leverages humor to meet the needs of independent clinics and shift abortion discourses in the United States. To investigate the relationship between abortion stigma, fear, and comedy, I address the following questions: (1) How does terror characterize abortion access? (2) What is the experience of providing and accessing abortion at independent abortion clinics like, and what are the cultural implications of these experiences? (3) In addition to legislative advocacy, what are some of the ways in which activists and advocates in the public arena can confront/interrupt/mitigate the terror surrounding abortion? And, (4) more broadly, how can performance theory and practice help us better understand abortion access? Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork from over eighteen independent abortion clinics across the United States and countless AAF arts activist events and comedy shows (from June 2018- January 2020), my dissertation explores these questions in three parts. In Part One: Remembering Terror, I investigate the histories of violence at the clinic, ask how they compose the collective memory of terror, and explore the ways in which independent providers respond to them. In Part Two: Performing Terror, I address performances outside of the clinic, drawing primarily from my ethnographic experiences as a clinic escort. And in Part Three: Confronting Terror, I take a deep dive into how Abortion Access Front uses humor to confront antiabortion terror and support independent clinics. What results is a theory of terror in the clinic landscape: terror infuses everything regarding abortion access, and it needs to be understood in order to move forward and expand equitable access.