An Antidote to the Foetal Image? The Role of Creative Performance Counterprotest in Contemporary Abortion Activism

How can pro-choice activists counteract the hegemony of the foetal image which has, for decades, served as a highly effective tool for anti-abortion activists worldwide? Via qualitative interviews and secondary data analysis, this article analyses the work of two Irish ‘pro-choice’ activist groups, Radical Queers Resist<i> </i>and Angels for Choice – active in the campaign to repeal the constitutional abortion ban in 2018 – to argue that creative, performance counterprotests serve to counteract the hegemony of the foetal image in three ways. Firstly, by using their bodies to ‘block’ graphic foetal imagery exhibits, pro-choice activists reclaim political and affective territory and contest the representation of abortion in these images as a ‘violent’ or ‘unnatural’ act. Secondly, their use of specific protest objects and costumes – in this case, LGBTQ flags and white angel costumes – offer an alternative visual and moral framing which destigmatises and reconstitutes abortion, in this case, as a cornerstone of sexual freedom and as a ‘divine right’. Lastly, this article argues that creative performance counterprotests provide an effective challenge to the foetal image because they focalise a new body-ontology; one which dislodges the ‘object-body’ of the foetus and prioritises the ‘lived’ bodily experience of women and abortion-seekers, at the centre of contemporary abortion rights debates.