Comic books have been a vehicle for abortion rights activism for decades, but no one has systematically studied how they portray abortion law. This project will examine US comic books published around three legal turning points: the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, Donald Trump’s 2016 election, and the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson ruling that overturned Roe. The gap is clear: existing research covers art as abortion activism, feminist comics, and law in comics separately, but never their intersection. This project treats comic books as a serious, under-researched form of legal advocacy—a visual, non-legal tool that the pro-choice movement has used to argue for change. If successful, the research will show how popular media shapes public understanding of law, particularly on contested issues like abortion. It will also demonstrate that self-published zines and underground comics—often dismissed as ephemera—are valuable primary sources for legal scholarship. The work is fundamentally curiosity-driven, exploring how creative expression and legal change interact. Similar studies of protest art and literature have, in the past, reshaped how historians and legal scholars understand social movements.
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My research project will focus on the portrayal of abortion law in comic books published in the US. I will explore how comic book writers have responded to landmark legal changes around three key junctures: before and after the legalisation of abortion in 1973 with Roe v. Wade, Donald Trump’s Presidential election in 2016, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 with Dobbs v. Jackson. My project will highlight the comics medium as an important but under-researched avenue through which the pro-choice movement has advocated for legal change. There is some existing research on art as abortion rights activism (Enright 2020), feminist comics (Nordenstam et al 2024), and the study of law and comics (Giddens 2016), but no research has explored the intersections of these themes. My project will contribute to current scholarship on abortion law by considering these visual, non-legal tools as a form of legal activism. Comic books have been used to explore various social justice issues (Davies 2017). The Library of Congress has a significant comic book collection, giving me access to self-published and underground comics anthologies which I would otherwise not have access to. I have identified various works that I would use in my research, including self-published zines and comics that were published in the 1960s and 70s as part of the women’s movement (e.g. Wimmen’s Comix). This project brings together and will build on several strands of my existing research expertise: global abortion law, law and literature, and arts-based methods including zines.
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