Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Episode: Emily Winderman, "Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History" (JHU Press, 2025)
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Dr. Emily Winderman (Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)
Date: November 19, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode features Dr. Emily Winderman discussing her book, Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History. The conversation explores the origins and evolution of the term "back-alley abortion," how rhetoric and imagery have shaped public perceptions, policy debates, and the role such terms play in present-day discussions post-Roe and Dobbs. Dr. Winderman traces how language and metaphor have contributed to stigmatizing reproductive care providers and reveals the racial and class biases embedded in dominant abortion discourses.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Origins of the Project

• Background:
  Dr. Winderman specializes in rhetorics of health, medicine, and reproductive justice, with a focus on the history of criminalized abortion.
• Motivation:
  The project began with research into the Kermit Gosnell case; Dr. Winderman discovered a lack of rhetorical histories on "back-alley abortion" and pursued the topic to fill this scholarly gap.

  “I asked a colleague... Are you aware of any rhetorical histories of back alley abortion? And he goes, well, no. And I said, well, I'm going to write that.” (04:11)

The "Back-Alley" Before Abortion

• Rhetorical Life of 'Back Alley':
  Back alleys in cities had long been associated with sanitation, morality, and criminality before the term was linked to abortion. Alleyways were depicted as unsanitary, dangerous, and spaces of moral failure.

• Example from Urban History:
  Dr. Winderman reads a Progressive Era poem describing alleys as “the birthplace of the weasel and the rat... rife with putrid odors,” highlighting how negative associations predate the abortion debate.

  “Alley was the birthplace of the weasel and the rat... The spirit of progression has declared disease must go and with it muddy alleys, sanitation's deadly foe.” (07:04)

• Insight:
  “Alley” retained affective residue of dirtiness and danger which the abortion debate later inherited.

Abortion Rhetoric Before 'Back-Alley'

• Metaphors for Criminalized Abortion:
  Prior to the "back-alley" association, criminalized abortion in the U.S. was discussed using metaphors such as mills, rackets, and rings. These metaphors brought their own spatial and moral connotations.

  • Mills were often associated with tabloid reporting and locales like Minneapolis ("mill city").
  • Rings emphasized networked, secretive criminal enterprises.

  “Abortions, criminalized abortions, really were understood through three dominant metaphors: mills, rackets and rings.” (10:39)

• Stakeholders:
  Groups like the American Medical Association and tabloid reporters shaped these metaphors, each highlighting different threats to public health or morality.

The Fusion: Creating 'Back-Alley Abortion'

• No "Smoking Gun":
  There was no single origin for "back-alley abortion" as a term.

• Media Influence:
  CBS’s 1965 special Abortion and the Law visually merged alley imagery with the criminalization narrative, even before the term itself was coined. The imagery (shadowy alleys, women entering clinics) began to merge negative connotations from both "alley" and abortion metaphors.

  “...they start to follow women who are entering and exiting... through alleys... sinister, scary music... very shadowy views.” (12:46)

• Rhetorical Baggage:
  The phrase accumulates affective residue—sanitary anxieties, moral panic, criminal implication, and racialized discourses, causing these associations to linger even as the literal meaning fades.

  “...what are the residual discourses, relationships, prejudices, and public feelings that abortion inherits as a function of it being connected to allies which themselves were deeply racialized spaces?” (14:15)

Legal and Political Implications

• Roe v. Wade Influence (1973):
  The right to privacy central to Roe was shaped by discourses around competence and professionalization in medical care—concerns that linked back to alley imagery.

  “This all sort of comes about because of a... professionalization crisis in who can provide the abortions and who... is doing a good job, a bad job.” (15:27)

• Post-Roe Shifts:
  The term morphs from describing a present threat to a warning about the possible return of dangerous, illegal abortions if Roe is overturned.

  “...the temporality begins to shift from a present threat to a future horizon.” (19:12)

Case Study: Kermit Gosnell

• Why Gosnell?
  The Gosnell case (2010) offered a real-life example evocative of "back-alley" cleanliness and criminality narratives, reinvigorating these metaphors with contemporary resonance.

  "...they found, you know, a clinic that was not kept to sanitary standards. There were cats in there... It was just a pretty heinous situation." (19:29)

• Political Consequences:
  Both anti- and pro-abortion groups used the case, but anti-abortion advocates weaponized its details with dramatic, horror-style media, amplifying the sense of moral and hygienic crisis.

  “...they created documentaries... adding scary music... allowed them to really amplify the aesthetics of the situation rather than... attending to why was it that there was a clinic like this a block and a half away from the University of Pennsylvania...” (22:09)

• Policy Impact:
  Details from Gosnell’s case entered the Supreme Court debate in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2018), justifying heightened restrictions (TRAP laws) for abortion providers, continuing a trend of using Black providers as exemplars for criminalization.

  “...the sanitary discourses, the criminal discourses and the... moral turpitude... were really leveraged.” (23:26)

Post-Dobbs America (2022–2025)

• Return of Criminalization as Present Reality:
  With the Dobbs decision overturning Roe, “back-alley abortion” is no longer a future threat—it's a present, lived reality as multiple states criminalize abortion outright.

  “...there’s now no mistake in what is really happening, which is a present threat or... a present promise of that criminality.” (24:34)

• Shifting Temporality:
  The phrase shifts again, reflecting active repression and current dangers rather than warnings of what might be lost.

Critical Reflections & Takeaways

• Fungibility of the Phrase:
  "Back-alley abortion" is flexible, absorbing new contexts while retaining its core rhetorical themes—sanitation, morality, and criminality.

  “Back alley abortion is deeply fungible. Right. It's fungible because... you're gonna start to see it adjust with the context.” (26:21)

• Obfuscation of Compassionate Care:
  The phrase erases histories of compassionate, skilled providers who risked much to care for patients before legalization, replacing nuance with stigmatizing imagery.

  “...it really obfuscates the caring and compassionate providers that took very personal risks to provide illegal abortions...” (26:21)

• Danger of Hospital Idealization:
  The conversation cautions that hospitals are not universally safe or moral spaces—they remain sites of infection, medical racism, and surveillance. The phrase can distract from ongoing injustices inside mainstream institutions.

  “...hospitals are spaces where you're likely to pick up hospital derived infections, where medical racism is still just as rampant as it's ever been...” (28:00)

• Surveillance and Privacy:
  The back-alley narrative justifies expansion of surveillance under the guise of “public health” and “moral order.”

  “...the promise of back alley abortion... creates a, a further warrant for surveillance.” (29:00)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Motivation:

  “I guess I have to do that. Right? Exactly.” — Emily Winderman (05:14)

• On Affective Residue:

  “Ways that historical resource deprivation was really connected to individual moral failures.” — Emily Winderman (14:15)

• On the Evolution of Threat:

  “...the temporality begins to shift from a present threat to a future horizon.” — Emily Winderman (19:12)

• On Weaponization of Gosnell Case:

  “...the antis end up really weaponizing the case to shut clinics down rather than situate the Gosnell case in a larger history of medical racism and resource deprivation...” (21:00)

• On Post-Dobbs Reality:

  “...there's now no mistake in what is really happening, which is a present threat or you know, a present promise of that criminality.” — Emily Winderman (24:34)

• On Purposeful Language Use:

  “Yeah, it's definitely useful to understand a term so that we, when we mean to use it, we use it and we don't use it when we don't mean to use it.” — Miranda Melcher (30:14)

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |----------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:07–03:22 | Introduction and topic overview | | 03:26–04:11 | Dr. Winderman’s background and motivation | | 05:17–09:34 | The rhetorical history of "back-alley" prior to abortion | | 10:20–11:22 | Criminalized abortion metaphors (mills, rackets, rings) discussed | | 12:46–14:01 | Shift in metaphors; CBS’s Abortion and the Law special, 1965 | | 15:05–16:26 | Connection to Roe v. Wade; professionalization and rhetoric | | 19:12–19:29 | Post-Roe evolution of the term’s meaning | | 19:29–23:22 | The Gosnell case’s influence and its weaponization | | 24:29–26:07 | Post-Dobbs reality for abortion and rhetoric | | 26:21–30:14 | Reflection on implications and responsible use of the term | | 30:42–33:04 | Winderman’s current oral history project in Minnesota |

Conclusion & Further Research

Dr. Winderman’s New Work:
She is undertaking an oral history project, "Healthcare under Crisis," interviewing abortion and gender-affirming care providers in Minnesota (a so-called “safe haven” state). The goal is to document on-the-ground responses to the shifting legal landscape post-Dobbs, ensuring future scholarship has access to activists’ and providers’ own words, not just external reporting.

“Our goal now is to really create an archive of stories such that when people write about the post DOBBS Moment... they are able to hear from the activists, the providers...” (30:42)

Final Reflection:
Language around abortion, especially loaded phrases like “back-alley abortion,” masks complexity and history. The conversation calls listeners to scrutinize such terms, considering their origins, implications, and the realities they obscure or reveal.

For Further Reading:

• Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History, Emily Winderman (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025)