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Abstract
This dissertation project examines the emotional and moral dynamics of contemporary abortion rhetoric by examining three case studies between the years of 2011 and 2013. I ask the question: how do public emotions function to define the contours of collective affiliation in one of the most heated public disagreements in the last 150 years. I coin a reading strategy entitled emotional adherence that seeks to understand how the emotions of sympathy, disgust, and anger circulate and adhere to bodies, objects, and spaces and thereby solidify the permeable boundaries of collective identity. Each chapter provides a history of the emotion and examines how the emotion functions to suture collective affiliation. I examine various texts that exemplify some of the major debates occurring in abortion-rights discourse today including visual imaging technologies, abortion clinic surveillance, and public modes of resistance. Each chapter teases out the circulation and uptake of the emotion in question and then applies the theoretical framework to the case at hand. In the conclusion, I argue for the continued significance of studying emotion in rhetorical studies at the juncture of the affective turn and consider the role of the academic in voicing reproductive health controversies in the 21st century.