Crafting Choice : Abortion Politics and Handwork in the United States

This book examines how people deploy publicly engaged handcraft campaigns as a means for abortion-political action, explains why efforts at persuasive handcrafting galvanize people around abortion politics, and considers what impact craftwork can have in an ever-polarized American public.

Crafting Choice: Abortion Politics and Handwork in the U.S. represents the first known inquiry into how people deploy publicly engaged handcraft campaigns as a means for abortion-political action. Whether crafters turn to yarn as a platform to fight for reproductive justice or to limit abortion access, this work takes a holistic approach to study how liberals and conservatives choose yarn as a political-activation tool in a Democracy. As a comprehensive investigation grounded in the shifting legality of abortion through two monumental U.S. Supreme Court decisions (including Roe v. Wade in 1973 and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022), this book explains why efforts at persuasive handcrafting galvanize people around abortion politics, and what impacts craftwork serves an ever-polarized American public. While “craftivism” is typically regarded as a tool of the left, with the whimsical and often tongue-in-cheek campaigns, this book also offers rare consideration of how those on the political right are actively engaged in their own craftivism efforts with abortion.