Abortion censorship is intended to take away your power

Information is power— and that’s why anti-choice censors want it to disappear.

S. Rogers

May 22, 2025

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☆This post is Part IV in a series examining the anti-choice movement’s authoritarian efforts and actions toward censoring information about abortion and abortion services.

In the 1800s, America’s “public schools began tentative instruction in anatomy and physiology… and by midcentury the public schools were disseminating anatomical information to schoolgirls all over the country.”1 But to many of the nation's regulars, educating girls and women about the human body was a dangerous act of female empowerment.2

The regulars were medical providers with particular, formal training who, on the eve of the Civil War, would launch a “crusade” to convince states to ban abortion as part of an effort to stamp out their professional competition and force Protestant, White women to outbreed those believed to be racially and religiously “inferior.”3

The regulars “were among the most defensive groups in the country on the subject of changing traditional sex roles. Even while state legislators were passing liberalized property and divorce laws, forcing some of the state universities to admit women, and debating women's suffrage in the 1860s and 1870s, most [regulars] were bitterly and stridently condemning what one of them called the ‘non-infanto mania’ that afflicted the nation's women and desperately decrying the unwillingness of American wives to remain in their ‘places’ bearing and raising children.”4 As one of these regulars complained in 1869: "Woman's rights and woman's sphere are, as understood by the American public, quite different from that understood by us as Physicians, or as Anatomists, or Physiologists."5

To many regulars, “the chief purpose of women was to produce children; anything that interfered with that purpose, or allowed women to ‘indulge’ themselves in less important activities, threatened marriage, the family, and the future of society itself.”6 For these men, “abortion was a supreme example of such an interference.”7

During this period, many regulars blamed an increase in abortions in America on physiological education for females in the nation’s schools.8 As one regular lamented in 1867: "The system of education in vogue amongst us, by introducing the study of physiology into our primary schools, and especially seminaries for the education of female youth, is fraught with mischief, and we fear has already accomplished as much or more towards the present fearful prevalence of induced abortion, as any known cause..."9

Thence, many regulars “called openly for the cessation of such instruction” (emphasis added).10

That these crusading opponents of abortion and women's rights called for banning informational instruction in anatomy and physiology — because they believed that access to anatomical knowledge was impacting the rate of abortions in America by empowering girls and women with information about their bodies — is a illustrative of the third historical tenet of censorship: Censorship targets access to impactful materials.

As we have previously discussed, scholars have identified several historical tenets of censorship. Four of these historical tenets (listed below) prove especially elucidative of current anti-choice actions and efforts, and provide insight into the anti-choice movement, its activists, and its adherents. Today, we'll dive into the third historical tenet of censorship.

Tenets of Historical Censorship

Censorship Is Raw Hegemonic Power
Censorship Is an Attempt to Prevent Social Change
Censorship Targets Access to Impactful Materials
Censorship Is Ultimately Driven by Fear

Tenet III: Censorship Targets Access to Impactful Materials

As we have previously covered, “censorship is the suppression of ideas and information that certain persons -- [be they] individuals, groups or government officials -- find objectionable... It is no more complicated than someone saying, ‘Don't let anyone read this book, or buy that magazine, or view that film, because I object to it!’”11

Scholars have observed that the authoritarian urge to censor is rooted in the hegemonic use of raw power in order to preserve the status and supremacy of currently privileged.12 As such, censorship involves an individual, institution, group, or government carrying out the suppression, banning, expurgation, or editing of any written or pictorial materials that the individual, institution, group, or government disfavors.13

The third historical tenet of censorship is that censorship movements target access to impactful materials.

Materials get suppressed, banned, or expurgated, or become subject to targeted editing, “because censors are afraid of them. Censors are afraid of access to them because the materials have the potential to open minds about the experiences and feelings of others,”14 challenge existing hierarchies and systems of oppression,15 and empower individuals and groups.16 It is this potential that censors fear. Hence, materials “that are targeted by censors are seen as threats, and usually, the threat is increased by the importance and potentially large impact of the work” (emphasis added).17

“A rundown of the perpetually banned and challenged authors through US history is a rollcall of notables, many of whose works challenged social hierarchies and prevailing attitudes, including Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, Walt Whitman, and Mary Wollstonecraft, among many others.”18 By attempting to prohibit access to these and other authors’ works, censors hope to preserve existing social hierarchies, conceal the wide range of diverse and complex human experiences, and “thwart access to and literacy in empathy.”19 (As previously discussed, material by and about BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, the Jewish community, and women are often the targets of censorship.)

Consider Art Spiegelman's Maus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about Spiegelman's father's harrowing experiences in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Reading Maus is an exercise in empathy. The book opens the mind and the heart to the experiences of others. Through personal narrative and the use of visual art, Maus humanizes the Jewish victims of the Nazis and helps young people understand the Holocaust.

As previously noted, the Nazis were enthusiastic censors, so much so that it shaped the world's view of their fascist movement. Nazis held public book burnings called ‘Feuersprüche’ (‘fire pronouncements’) at which condemned books were denounced for various reasons before being tossed into the fires. “Because these actions defined the world's view of the Nazis, when members of the American military liberated a population, they were instructed to immediately reassure it by saying: ‘We are not book burners.’”20

Fast forward to America ninety-two years later: Maus has become victim to the contemporary fascist censorship movement's neo-Feuersprüche at school board meetings in Republican states.21

While opponents of sexual and reproductive health and (human) rights (SRHR) are attempting to censor books, the movement’s main focus is online abortion information and resources. As demonstrated by the 1800s regulars’ attempts to ban physiological education for girls in the nation’s schools, discussed above, general information is often targeted by censorship movements because of the information’s potential impact.

To briefly reiterate, materials get suppressed, banned, or expurgated, or become subject to targeted editing, “because censors are afraid of them. Censors are afraid of access to them because the materials have the potential to open minds about the experiences and feelings of others,”22 challenge existing hierarchies and systems of oppression,23 and empower individuals and groups.24 It is this potential that censors fear. Hence, materials “that are targeted by censors are seen as threats, and usually, the threat is increased by the importance and potentially large impact of the work” (emphasis added).25

This is especially true of informative materials.

“Information is a powerful tool that can drive social, economic, and political progress.”26 “For marginalized communities, information acts as a gateway to learn and acquire knowledge about legal rights, government policies, and available resources.”27 Furthermore, information “empowers individuals by providing knowledge, fostering transparency, and enabling informed decision-making.”28 — This is what the anti-choice hegemon fears.

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In June 2022, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) released a “Post-Roe Model Abortion Law,” a guide for states to use as a guide for crafting abortion bans. The NRLC’s model law would prohibit:

“knowingly or intentionally giving information to a pregnant woman, or someone seeking the information on her behalf, by telephone, the internet, or any other medium of communication, regarding self-administered abortions or the means to obtain [an abortion]”'; and
“knowingly or intentionally hosting or maintaining an internet website, providing access to an internet website, or providing an internet service, purposefully directed to a pregnant woman [], that provides information on how to obtain [an abortion].”

These provisions in the NRLC’s model law are intended to, through the raw hegemonic power of government, render each person an island unto themselves— technically free to seek out legal abortions on their own, but without any access to the information needed to do so. It is also intended to limit the ways we can learn and even talk about abortion. The NRLC’s model law and the state bills based upon it are “part of a new national blitz by antiabortion activists to alter not only access to abortion, but whether and how we can even discuss it. This is downright un-American.”29

“When evidence-based sources of information [about health and healthcare] disappear, they are easily replaced with misinformation, fearmongering, and a potential infodemic. This disproportionately harms those already facing barriers to good healthcare… The potential consequences are dire, including increased rates of unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and the spread of preventable diseases, as well as limited access to reproductive options and treatments.”30 Censoring information about health and healthcare “not only restricts[] access to critical knowledge-enhancing information but also [has] the potential to exacerbate health inequalities. In the short term, [censorship] can reduce access to healthcare, information, and resources, especially for disadvantaged groups. In the longer term, [censorship] deepens[] systemic disparities, making it even harder for these groups to achieve good health outcomes.”31

Importantly, “the suppression of accurate, science-based information leaves individuals unable to make informed choices about their bodies and health, undermining autonomy and well-being.”32

Information is power, and a void in access to powerful information only serves to preserve the status and supremacy of currently privileged.

“[P]eople's agentic abortion decisions can be subversive by affirming people, including those who have abortions, as whole human beings.”33 Hence, abortion decisions are “actions against objectifying treatment and in support of their own humanity.”34 Access to information makes these decisions possible through empowering abortion seekers as autonomous, moral agents and whole human beings.

In other words, access to abortion information is impactful, it is power— and that’s why anti-choice hegemons want that access to disappear.■

rePro-Truth

Abortion censorship is intended to take away your power

Information is power— and that’s why anti-choice censors want it to disappear.

☆This post is Part IV in a series examining the anti-choice movement’s authoritarian efforts and actions toward censoring information about abortion and abortion services.

Tenet III: Censorship Targets Access to Impactful Materials

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