Assuming Pain: A Call for Refusal Within Abortion Narratives

Abstract

This paper critically analyses the predominant utilization of pain narratives within abortion advocacy, and instead offers up a framework for thinking of abortion outside of assumed affective frameworks such as shame, stigma and trauma. Utilizing Tuck and Yang's analysis of pain narratives as a mechanism of settler colonialism's extractive propensities, this paper identifies the ways in which the abortion rights movement can at times, narrowly focus on abortion seekers' pain in an effort to gain rights. In following Tuck and Yang's suggestion of refusal, the withholding of information within social science research, we can allow for a redirection that opens up the space of abortion advocacy beyond bipartisanship and extractive pain narratives when discussing and advocating for abortion access. Ultimately, this redirection holds space for affective responses towards abortion that do not conform to hegemonic expectations of trauma or awfulness, instead honouring narratives that not only stray from pain but are ineffable to articulate altogether.