When Participation Threatens Democracy: The Case of Anti-Abortion Influencers

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June of 2022, returning the legality of abortion to individual states. While this was a win for anti-abortion actors, their ultimate goal is not state control of abortion but banning abortion altogether. As such, they engage in what appears to be democratic participation—in-person protests, voting (or strategically choosing not to), and critically, mobilizing digital technologies to galvanize potential adherents. In this chapter, we examine the anti-democratic implications of anti-abortion activists’ participation—especially online—through the case study of “embodied political influencers” in the anti-abortion movement. U.S. post-Roe anti-abortion activists espouse purportedly democratic values like “inclusivity,” “equality,” and “voice” toward creating digital subaltern counterpublics of marginalized people. Yet their end goal is an anti-democratic one—stripping all people of the reproductive rights to an abortion. As such, we explore the tensions inherent in digital activism, particularly the ways in which connection across identity and geographic boundaries facilitates inclusion of marginalized communities, but democratic backsliding as well.