Date of Graduation
5-2015
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Degree Level
Undergraduate
Department
Communication
Advisor/Mentor
Corrigan, Lisa
Committee Member/Reader
Schulte, Stephanie
Committee Member/Second Reader
Sacharoff, Laurent
Abstract
This study advances a critical legal analysis using Kenneth Burke's pentad to provide a rhetorical history and political assessment of abortion clinic buffer zones. Using the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (1994), Hill v. Colorado (2000), and McCullen v. Coakley (2014), I offer an assessment of the politics of identification and location at play in both the majority opinion and dissent in each case. Although some communication scholarship, most notably Celeste Condit’s book Decoding Abortion Rhetoric (1990), has examined the political rhetoric of the abortion debates particularly in the 1980s, this groundbreaking study departs from the extant literature by moving from the executive analyses of buffer zones and towards an understanding of how judicial language has framed debate over clinic access, space, and emerging publics that are agitating around reproductive healthcare.
Citation
de Saint Felix, S. (2015). The space between: a rhetorical analysis of space and how it functions within buffer zone discourse concerning reproductive healthcare. Communication Undergraduate Honors Theses Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/commuht/2