Lessons from the Crisis Pregnancy Center: Anti-abortion Activism and the Architecture of Coercion

M.C. Overholt examines the strategic positioning of “crisis pregnancy centers” around the remaining abortion clinics across the United States, their shared interior compositions intended to intimidate a pregnant woman at her most vulnerable, and their tactics for eliciting support. The proliferation of these establishments began as a defensive response to the feminist abortion clinic, but, she argues, it has become one of the anti-abortion movement’s most effective offensive strategies. Notably, the same tactical principles were mobilized in the realization of both, thus revealing the ideological flexibility of self-help architectural principles.