On Thursday, Alyssa Basmajian, a postdoctoral fellow at the Population Studies and Training Center, lectured on the effect of gerrymandering — the manipulation of electoral district lines to advantage a certain party — on reproductive rights. The lecture revolved around Basmajian's ethnographic fieldwork in Ohio, where she dove into the politics of abortion care.
“I chose to do my fieldwork in Ohio because it has been labeled a political bellwether and is known as a ‘purple state,’ or a mix of red and blue that is not dominated by one political party,” she wrote in an email to The Herald. “However, in recent years, Ohio’s purple status has been questioned and it has been considered more of a ‘red,’ or conservative leaning state.”
Basmajian expressed that she originally did not plan to focus on gerrymandering, though many she spoke with pointed to the practice’s role in a dramatic decrease in abortion care clinics in Ohio.
She discussed the concept of reproductive gerrymandering, or the “deliberate manipulation of electoral districts to benefit the Republican party, which leads to conservative extremism and is then connected to the passage of unpopular legislation.”
In 2010, the Republican State Leadership Committee launched the Redistricting Majority Project, or REDMAP, which aimed to increase Republican seats by redrawing legislative district lines. The program received over $30 million in funding and Republicans gained nearly 700 seats, according to the lecture.
Basmajian described attending a community discussion the day after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade. She recounted the host of the discussion claiming that Republicans “gerrymandered the state under their control after the last census” and had “drawn even worse districts because they’re afraid to face” Democratic voters.
“Reproductive gerrymandering gives the impression that the majority of residents in ‘red states’ want abortion to be illegal in most or all cases, but this is a misconception crafted by partisan groups with legislative power,” Basmaijan wrote.
She also delved into more personal accounts, which she gained through interviews with healthcare professionals. She recalled a conversation with a healthcare provider, who had described some of her “patients confused as to why their reproductive rights were stripped from them,” specifically citing a patient who was crying and begging on “all four limbs” when she was unable to get an abortion.
Basmajian argued that this is a form of structural violence and a consequence of reproductive gerrymandering.
The Ohio biennial budget allocated over over $10 million to crisis pregnancy centers, or CPCs, which have religious affiliations and do not offer or refer women to abortions. Barely any funding is allocated toward abortion clinics, according to Basmajian. In Ohio, there are over 120 CPCs but only nine abortion-providing facilities.
Basmajian said these CPCs “work under the guise of pregnancy counseling, yet they operate to deter individuals from obtaining an abortion.” She described the account of one woman who had gone to a CPC to gain more insight on her options but said the workers were “more focused on keeping the baby.” They gave her baby socks, a prenatal Bible and showed images of pregnancy in the “shape of actual babies, instead of a ball of cells.”
Since 2011, over 600 abortion restrictions have been passed throughout the U.S. according to Basmajian. She added that 73% of states with Republican gerrymandering — such as Ohio, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana — passed “heartbeat bans,” which prohibit abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy.
Euler de Leon GS attended the lecture given his interest in learning other’s insights on reproductive health following the new republican majority in the House and Senate.
“I think the connection she made between gerrymandering and how that leads to more extreme views in office is interesting and makes sense,” he said. “It's sort of like a symptom that arises from people just trying to stay in power.”
From the lecture, Basmajian hoped people would learn that reproductive gerrymandering is a “mechanism that can be used to mask the actors and the power they hold to enact reproductive governance” and is able to “reveal both the political stakes at hand and the everyday violence experienced by individuals.”
“By denying access to a basic healthcare need, state legislators indirectly and systematically cause structural harm to pregnant people — a gendered form of structural or everyday violence,” she wrote.
Claire Song is a Senior Staff Writer covering science & research. She is a sophomore from California studying Applied Math-Biology. She likes to drink boba in her free time.
