Abortion Storytelling in a Conservative Post-Dobbs Legislature

The role of abortion storytelling has become increasingly relevant since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Supreme Court decision brought about a widely varying landscape of abortion access in the Unites States. Personal anecdotes about pregnancy-related emergencies, the need to travel across state lines for abortion care, and other post-Dobbs realities shed light on the relationship between abortion access, maternal and infant health, and community wellbeing. As a state with some of the worst maternal and infant health outcomes, where abortion is now almost completely banned, Louisiana provides a compelling context for understanding how such stories are circulated by abortion rights advocates to impact antiabortion politics. Narrative stories strategically convey ideas and ideals in politics to define and challenge policy problems (Stone, 1988). Health advocacy testimony can increase state legislator awareness of an issue and influence decision-making when storytellers are perceived by policymakers as credible (Moreland-Russell et. al., 2015). In our descriptive and discourse analysis of abortion-related debates in the Louisiana legislature over the four years since Dobbs (2022-2025), we examine who is telling stories and what kinds of stories are told. Demographics of the storytellers, in terms of race, age, gender, profession, and region, reveal who is participating in this stage of the political process. Louisiana storytellers make meaningful personal distinctions between pregnancy intention and the reason for seeking abortion, employing language such as “wanted,” “elective,” or “medically induced” that can act to reinforce abortion stigma contrary to broader political and movement goals (Janiak & Goldberg, 2015). As such, we are able to describe whose voices are represented and whose are not, while also analyzing the language and meanings conveyed within these stories about pregnancy, women, medicine, and abortion. Looking also at legislator responses and bill outcomes, we argue that storytelling provides an important opportunity to educate policymakers and nuance the public record on abortion, but a broader array of types of storytellers and stories, as well as strategies for circulating them, may be needed to truly impact policy outcomes in the state.