"From Back-Alleys to Safe Havens: Abortion Rhetoric, Space, and Reproductive (In)justice"
Oct. 29, Thursday, 2:30 – 3:30 p.m.
Jackie Gaughan Multicultural Center, Unity Room/212

This talk will examine how rhetoric has shaped our dominant understandings of reproductive criminality from Roe v. Wade to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. After the Dobbs decision, many states were emboldened to enact restrictions on reproductive freedom nationwide. Minnesota seemingly emerged as an outlier in the Midwest by expanding protections for out of state travelers. While public leaders across Minnesota declared the state a “safe haven” and “refuge,” oral histories with activists and providers demonstrate nuanced reactions to this labeling. With reproductive injustice and medical racism still viscerally present in Minnesota, this talk will historicize safe haven rhetoric by drawing connections to another rhetorical commonplace: abortion’s back-alley. Demonstrating uncanny echoes between back-alley and safe haven rhetoric, this talk speaks to the power of rhetoric to amplify and diminish the presence of reproductive injustice in the public imagination.

Dr. Emily Winderman works at the intersection of rhetorical studies, public health, and critical race and feminist theory, with a research program organized around three connected areas: reproductive health and rhetorical history, the rhetoric of health and medicine, and affect studies. Her book Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History, published by Johns Hopkins University Press is the recipient of the 2026 Outstanding Book Award from the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender and demonstrates the hidden racialization and classed work embedded in the oft-cited cautionary phrase that we "never go back to the era of back-alley abortions." Drawing on detailed archival research and Black feminist critiques of dominant rhetorical traditions, her work examines how public discourse shapes lived experiences of health and reproductive justice, with particular attention to communities marginalized by race, class, and citizenship. As a co-director of the interdisciplinary Healthcare Under Crisis oral history project, she has interviewed over two dozen abortion and trans affirming healthcare providers and activists to critically interrogate Minnesota’s “safe haven” rhetoric.