What Hath Dobbs Wrought? Abortion activism in precarious and punitive times

In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022) overturned Roe v. Wade (1973), abolishing the constitutional right to abortion. Significant in its radical criminalization of abortion, Dobbs reinvigorated feminist activism for reproductive justice. Digital and mobile technologies are used in innovative ways by activists to organize, educate, and dispel counter-narratives about abortion, including feminist global networks that provide medication abortion and abortion storytelling through social media and media interventions. There continue to be analogue interventions that are the legacy of the 1960's-era Jane Collective. In this vexatious legal environment, the communication technologies that facilitate abortion activism are weaponized by restrictionist actors to not only misinform, but also, through abortion surveillance, to track and curtail access to reproductive care by tapping into and exploiting what we term the personal data economy of reproductive health. Activists are thus countering the surveillant assemblages engaged by restrictionist states whose objective is to criminalize abortion access and care across borders. This article considers the historical and current media ecology surrounding reproductive health, care and justice, the technologies that have and continue to shape it, and the array of analogue, digital, mobile and hybrid feminist activist interventions emerging post-Roe.