Elliot Steeves-
All twenty students in Political Science and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Professor Jill Locke’s Challenge Seminar on Abortion in the Post-Dobbs Era will hold a poster display in the lower level of the Jackson Campus Center on May 8th from 2:30-3:45 p.m. Both Peace Coffee and cookies will be available, and the students will be open for discussion about the past, present, and future of abortion care.
Challenge Seminars at Gustavus are often encouraged to have some sort of public-facing component as part of their course. In the case of Locke’s seminar, students wanted to create an informative public series of posters concerning the past, present, and future of abortion care in the United States.
“The more I discussed the idea with students, the more we liked the idea of some kind of installation,” Locke said. “The idea was developed organically, and there was a lot of information that students felt like people didn’t know.”
Locke confirmed that there will be around ten posters total on display, each done by a different group of students. One group will display a poster on the original underground network that helped access abortion pre-Roe, featuring organizations like the Jane Collective and the Clergy Consultation Services. Another will show maps and data from the Guttmacher Institute displaying the availability of abortion on a state-by-state basis.
Still, another poster will contrast different myths and facts about the abortion procedure. There will also be a poster displaying the physical and mental health effects of both receiving and being denied the procedure.
Locke’s seminar gleaned much of this information from course readings done throughout the semester. These texts included The Turn Away Study by Dr Diana Greene Foster, which focuses on a ten-year study on what happens when women are denied abortions, as well as Obstacle Course by David Cohen, dealing with barriers to access to abortion in the United States.
Two other course texts were You’re The Only One I’ve Told by Dr Meerah Shah, a compilation of different stories from women on why they received an abortion, and Ejaculate Responsibly by Gabrielle Blair, a book that argues in favor of moving the abortion debate toward why men aren’t adequately held accountable for unwanted pregnancy.
Planned Parenthood employee Alli Stalin Carlson ‘11 will visit the forum. (Currently waiting on question responses, delete this if I do not add them in by tonight).
Locke has taught the course not as a philosophical debate around whether abortion is ethical, but simply a treatment of abortion as a healthcare procedure.
“We are looking at the circumstances under which the state regulates abortion and its effect on public health, and the standing of full-fledged citizens who could get pregnant and might seek an abortion,” Locke said. “I am very concerned, as a democratic theorist, about the court’s role in this.”
Locke also emphasized the issues present in reading the Dobbs decision as it is written: with the goal of returning abortion to the states and allowing people to vote on it.
“There is difficulty in getting ballot initiatives to actually work,” Locke said. “The goalposts keep moving. If we take the content at its face that this should not be controlled at the federal level, to put it mildly, there are many obstacles.”
Locke was reminded throughout the process of teaching the seminar how important it is for students to come together from multiple disciplines to grapple with issues such as abortion.
“I do think we need to be less siloed in our majors and our departments,” Locke said. “There are a lot of big challenges, like abortion and democracy, that are not issues just for GWS and Political Science students. That isn’t something that is siloed into one or two departments.”
As for students who are on the fence about attending the forum?
“There isn’t a moment of, ‘Here’s the lecture!’” Locke said. “You are literally talking to students about their posters. You can just walk by, grab a coffee, and hear something! You’d be surprised by what you can learn, and the care that students put into these posters is really impressive.”
All students who are interested in this interdisciplinary event are welcome to attend.