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Issue 22.1 | Fall 2026 — Counterlistenings: Sound, Power, Resistance

Protected: Ultra/Sound: The Antiabortion Weaponization of Sonic Vitalism

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Works Cited

“ACOG Guide to Language and Abortion.” The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, October 2024. https://www.acog.org/contact/media-center/abortion-language-guide.

“Characteristics of U.S. Abortion Patients in 2014 and Changes Since 2008.” Guttmacher Institute. May 2016. https://www.guttmacher.org/report/characteristics-us-abortion-patients-2014.

“Counseling and Waiting Period Requirements for Abortion.” Guttmacher Institute. Last modified February 26, 2026. https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/counseling-and-waiting-periods-abortion.

“Interactive Map: US Abortion Policies and Access After Roe.” Guttmacher Institute. Last modified March 27, 2026. https://states.guttmacher.org/policies/.

“Requirements for Ultrasound.” Guttmacher Institute. Last modified February 6, 2026. https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/requirements-ultrasound.

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Bergin, Ashlee. “Kentucky’s Abortion Law Forces Me to Humiliate My Patients.” ACLU News & Commentary, September 26, 2019. https://www.aclu.org/news/reproductive-freedom/kentuckys-abortion-law-forces-me-humiliate-my-patients.

Candelario, Rosemary. “Transvaginal Sound: Politics and Performance.” Scholar & Feminist Online 11, no. 3 (2013). https://sfonline.barnard.edu/transvaginal-sound-politics-and-performance/.

Chen, Mel Y. Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect. Duke University Press, 2012.

Congress.gov. “H.R. 682 — 119th Congress (2025–2026): Heartbeat Protection Act of 2025.” January 23, 2025. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/682.

Denbow, Jennifer. “Good Mothering Before Birth: Measuring Attachment and Ultrasound as an Affective Technology.” Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 5 (2019): 1–20.

Edvardsson, Kristina, et al. “Ultrasound’s ‘window on the womb’ brings ethical challenges for balancing maternal and fetal health interests: obstetricians’ experiences in Australia.” BMC Medical Ethics 16, no. 31 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-015-0023-y.

Foster, Diana Greene. The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, A Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having—or Being Denied—an Abortion. Scribner, 2020.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume I. Translated by Robert Hurley. Vintage, 1990 [1976].

———. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. Edited by Michel Senellart, François Ewald, and Alessandro Fontana. Translated by Graham Burchell. Picador, 2010 [2004].

Fletcher, John C. and Mark I. Evans, “Maternal Bonding in Early Fetal Ultrasound Examinations.” The New England Journal of Medicine, February 17, 1983: 392–93.

Frost, Erin A., and Angela M. Haas. “Seeing and Knowing the Womb: A Technofeminist Reframing of Fetal Ultrasound toward a Decolonization of Our Bodies.” Computers and Composition 43 (2017): 88–105.

Goodwin, Michele. Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood. Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Horn, Dan and Haley BeMiller. “They’re not gonna quit’: How Ohio anti-abortion activists shaped post-Roe America.” USA Today. October 26, 2022. https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2022/10/26/10-year-old-ohio-abortion-law-ban-roe-timeline/10530091002/.

Howard, Grace. The Pregnancy Police: Conceiving Crime, Arresting Personhood. University of California Press, 2024.

Howes-Mischel, Rebecca. “The ‘Sound’ of Life, or, how Should We Hear a Fetal ‘Voice’?” In The Anthropology of the Fetus: Biology, Culture, and Society, ed. Sallie Han, Tracy K. Betsinger, and Amy B. Scott (Berghahn Books, 2017): 252–75.

James, Robin. The Sonic Episteme: Acoustic Resonance, Neoliberalism, and Biopolitics. Duke University Press, 2019.

Jenson, Rachel, et al. “Semantics Matter: Maternal–Fetal Medicine Physician Perspectives on Defining Abortion Care in the Post-Dobbs Southeast.” Journal of Women’s Health 34, no. 6 (2025): 760–67. https://doi.org/10.1089/jwh.2024.0639.

Journey to Contentment. “Six Weeks Ultrasound- Baby Heartbeat.” YouTube video, 3:19. December 22, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0xuwMuba0c.

Kaplan, E. Ann. “Look Who’s Talking, Indeed: Fetal Images in Recent North American Visual Culture.” In Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency, ed. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Grace Chang, and Linda Rennie Forcey (Routledge, 1994): 121–38.

Lambert, Victoria C., Emily E. Hackworth, and Deborah L. Billings. “Qualitative Analysis of Anti-Abortion Discourse Used in Arguments for a 6-Week Abortion Ban in South Carolina.” Frontiers in Global Women’s Health 4 (2023). https://doi.org/10.3389/fgwh.2023.112413210.3389/fgwh.2023.1124132.

Lentjes, Rebecca, Amy Alterman, and Whitney Arey. “‘The Ripping Apart of Silence’: Sonic Patriarchy and Anti-Abortion Harassment.” Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture 1, no. 4 (2020): 422–42.

Mador, Jess. “Does Georgia’s Fetal Personhood Law Mean a Pregnant Woman Must Stay on Life Support?” NPR. June 7, 2025.

Morgan, Lynn M. and Meredith W. Michaels, eds. Fetal Subjects, Feminist Positions. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.

Petchesky, Rosalind. “Fetal Images: The Power of Visual Culture in the Politics of Reproduction.” Feminist Studies 13, no. 2 (1987): 263–92.

Roberts, Dorothy. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. Random House, 1997.

Ryman, Anne, and Matt Wynn. “For anti-abortion activists, success of ‘heartbeat’ bills was 10 years in the making.” The Center for Public Integrity, June 20, 2019.

Sanger-Katz, Margot, Claire Cain Miller, and Quoctrung Bui. “Who Gets Abortions in America?” New York Times, December 14, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/14/upshot/who-gets-abortions-in-america.html.

Simmons-Duffin, Selena and Carrie Feibel. “The Texas abortion ban hinges on ‘fetal heartbeat.’ Doctors call that misleading.” NPR, May 3, 2022. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/09/02/1033727679/fetal-heartbeat-isnt-a-medical-term-but-its-still-used-in-laws-on-abortion.

Smyth, Julie Carr. “Anti-abortion groups adopt in-your-face tactics.” Statesboro Herald. March 3, 2011.

Sterne, Jonathan, ed. The Sound Studies Reader. Routledge, 2012.

Texas Legislature. “S.B. 8: An Act relating to abortion, including abortions after detection of an unborn child’s heartbeat; authorizing a private civil right of action (Texas Heartbeat Act).” Commenced September 1, 2021. https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/87R/billtext/pdf/SB00008F.pdf.

Taylor, Janelle S. The Public Life of the Fetal Sonogram: Technology, Consumption, and the Politics of Reproduction. Rutgers University Press, 2008.

Thompson, Marie. “‘Your Womb, the Perfect Classroom’: Prenatal Sound Systems and Uterine Audiophilia.” Feminist Review 127 (2021): 73–89. https://doi.org/10.1177/0141778920958671.

——. Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect and Aesthetic Moralism. Bloomsbury, 2017.

Wyoming Legislature. “H.B. 0126: Human Heartbeat Act.” March 9, 2026. https://wyoleg.gov/Legislation/2026/HB0126.

Ziegler, Mary. Personhood: The New Civil War Over Reproduction. Yale University Press, 2025.

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