Censoring abortion is an authoritarian act of raw hegemonic power

Opponents of abortion rights want nothing less than the full colonization of American’s minds.

S. Rogers

May 08, 2025

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☆This post is Part II in a series examining the anti-choice movement’s efforts and actions to censor information about abortion and abortion services.

“We are not book burners.” That’s what American troops were instructed to tell local populations as they entered and liberated communities from the Nazis.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the censorship of information was, in the eyes of the public, emblematic of fascist movements across the globe.1 During World War II alone (1939-1945), "more books, works of art, historical records, libraries, archives, and museums were destroyed than [during] any other event in human history.”2 The Nazis were especially enthusiastic censors.

“Nazi university students held public book burnings in numerous German towns and cities. At these staged events, speakers often read statements called ‘Feuersprüche’ (‘fire oaths’) while throwing books that the Nazis deemed ‘un-German’ into bonfires. These oaths explained why certain works were being burned.”3 Each time the Nazis conquered a territory, they “systematically pillaged and destroyed every library, archive, and museum… obliterating a large, irreplaceable portion of recorded human history, experience, and expression in the process.”4

“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.’”5

“Censorship is an act of control, driven by a combustible mix of power, privilege, and fear.”6 Censorship campaigns “occur in response to social changes that alarm a privileged population, with the goal of dictating access to information for the entire community according to the personal beliefs of the privileged group. The urge to censor is rooted in the use of raw power to preserve the currently privileged.”7

In this way, censorship is about power. “Whose viewpoints are enacted, and whose perspectives are ignored? Who decides what is obscene, politically unacceptable or a threat to security? And who is affected by these decisions?”8

“Censorship is the suppression of ideas and information that certain persons -- individuals, groups or government officials -- find objectionable or dangerous. 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!’”9 This involves the “suppression, banning, expurgation, or editing by an individual, institution, group or government that enforce or influence its decision against members of the public -- of any written or pictorial materials which that individual, institution, group or government” disfavors.10

Censorship “may take place at any point in time, whether before an utterance occurs, prior to its widespread circulation, or by punishment of communicators after dissemination of their messages, so as to deter others from like expression.”11

Censors try to use power “to impose their view of what is truthful and appropriate, or offensive and objectionable, on everyone else.”12

Since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning Roe v. Wade, those opposed to sexual and reproductive health and human rights (SRHR) have decidedly joined the “book burners,” the censors, pushing for more and more authoritarian legislation that infringes on American’s constitutional rights of speech, expression, and access to information.

As we previously discussed, anti-choicers are now attempting to institute vast online censorship, an open attack on American’s right of free speech and expression, and right to receive and access information. In so doing, the anti-choice movement has fully embraced digital dictatorship.

In Texas, for example, “legislators not only want to make sure no one can start a discussion on [abortion], they also want to make sure no one can find one. The goal is to wipe this information from the internet altogether.”13 (See HB 5510/SB 2880.)

Scholars have identified several historical tenets of censorship. Four of these historical tenets are especially elucidative of current anti-abortion actions and efforts in censorship, and provide insight into the anti-abortion movement, its activists, and its adherents. These tenets are:

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

IN THIS POST: In today's post, we will examine the first historical tenet of censorship. In so doing, we can ascertain, critique, and counteract the goals, psychological drivers, and methods of the anti-reproductive-rights movement’s embrace of authoritarian censorship post-Dobbs.

Tenet 1: Censorship Is Raw Hegemonic Power

“No matter how censorship is framed by its adherents, it is an act of unbridled hegemonic power. Regardless of whether the hegemon represents the majority of the population or a privileged few, the act of censoring is the intentional removal of the intellectual choice of others. It is a brutal and blunt method of attempting to control access, literacy, and discourse, and by extension all other social interactions.”14 “The power of censorship extends beyond the removal of materials,” as “[t]here are many ways to wield the raw power of censorship.”15

“The exercise of this raw hegemonic power need not be an application of physical force to be successful; it can be drawn entirely from privilege. In the US, that usually derives from white, Christian, high socio-economic privilege.”16

Like censorship, abortion restrictions are also the exercise of raw hegemonic power.

Since Dobbs, however, opponents of sexual and reproductive health and human rights (SRHR) have grown increasingly frustrated by the fact that their power does not yet extend into free states, and by the fact that some pregnant people have been able to circumvent restrictions by accessing abortion medications online.

Medication abortion “has made it difficult to enforce abortion bans in the states where they exist — indeed, even with Roe vs. Wade reversed, studies show an increase in the number of abortions performed annually in the U.S. Abortion pills also make it harder to frighten doctors and harder to stigmatize the termination of pregnancy.”17

“When all abortions were surgical, the procedure had to take place in bricks-and-mortar facilities. The clinics became targets for protest and sometimes violence and vandalism. Abortion pills, however, can be prescribed remotely, through a telehealth consultation, and they are taken at home very early in a pregnancy. Pills make abortion more private, distancing patients from clinic protests.”18

“[C]riminalizing abortion is first and foremost about obedience, about creating docile people and bodies, and enshrining the ability to control people's bodies as property of the state.”19 Abortion opponents rue the disobedience that pregnant people have demonstrated in refusing to submit their bodies and futures to the hegemonic powers that be, and the disobedience of the network of helpers and providers in continuing to aid the pregnant citizens of the hegemonic states.

Additionally, “the nature of medication abortion seems to be reshaping how Americans think about terminating a pregnancy: The number of those who see abortion as a moral decision has increased in recent years.”20

Most importantly, “[i]f abortion opponents succeed in making abortion pills inaccessible, the stigma surrounding abortion may well increase, and access to the procedure decrease. That’s why antiabortion groups have been relentless in their pursuit of pills.”21

“Nothing less than Americans’ view of abortion itself is on the line.”22

Because of this, anti-choicers are turning to another form of raw hegemonic power: censorship.

Through authoritarian efforts, like Texas’s HB 5510/SB 2880, abortion opponents hope to shut down access to abortion medications by “wiping[] this information from the internet altogether,”23 and wiping reproductive rights from the American conscience in the process.

■ To preserve their own power and privilege, abortion rights opponents seek to use the raw hegemonic power of censorship to “impose their view of what is truthful and appropriate, or offensive and objectionable, on everyone else”24 and to say to you, “Don't let anyone read this book, or buy that magazine, or view that film, or go to that website, because I object to it!”

■ To preserve their own power and privilege, they seek to use the raw hegemonic power of censorship to force everyone into obedience to their own personal beliefs.

■ To preserve their own power and privilege, they seek to use the raw hegemonic power of censorship to fortify their control over everyone’s bodies and futures.

Authoritarian opponents of sexual and reproductive health and human rights (SRHR) want nothing less than the full colonization of American’s minds. If that is not raw hegemonic power, nothing is. ■

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Censoring abortion is an authoritarian act of raw hegemonic power

Opponents of abortion rights want nothing less than the full colonization of American’s minds.

☆This post is Part II in a series examining the anti-choice movement’s efforts and actions to censor information about abortion and abortion services.

Tenet 1: Censorship Is Raw Hegemonic Power

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