FEMINIST QUEEN OR CONSPIRACY THEORIST? FEMALE SPREADERS OF WOMEN'S HEALTH DISINFORMATION

Abstract

Soon after the $2 decision overturned the federal right to abortion in the United States, an investigation revealed a disinformation campaign against birth control, driven by anti-abortion influencers. Disinformation targeting abortion and birth control is partially rooted in conspiracy, particularly the Great Replacement Theory, which plays on fears of white people being “replaced” by people of color. This notion is a long-standing issue of the anti-abortion movement, as early successes in banning abortion were partially motivated by fears of white people having fewer babies than people of color. Studies have shown that Black Americans believe in conspiracy theories about birth control, e.g., that it is deployed by the government as a form of genocide against Black people. Unfortunately, though, these beliefs are not entirely unfounded. This problematizes definitions of conspiracy theories as inherently false and unjustified—Black Americans, for instance, have long undergone inhumane experimentation by the American medical system. This illuminates a troubling connection—that between embodied oppression and conspiracy-believing. We query whether this overlap is weaponized by the anti-abortion community to spread disinformation campaigns. Through a critical technocultural discourse analysis of 14 hours of Instagram stories and posts from 154 members of the anti-abortion collected between February 14, 2023 and February 27, 2023, we find that the anti-abortion movement has weaponized feminist knowledge-production and relies on grains of embodied experience to spread disinformation campaigns, which at times snowball into racially-motivated conspiracy theories for political and/or financial gain.