about

Welcome to Doctoring Dobbs!

My name is Risa. I am a scholar of reproductive politics, advocate for social justice, and creator of this gallery of erasure poems. Doctoring Dobbs is my response to the US Supreme Court’s majority decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended federally protected abortion rights and threatens many more.

I made these poems by strategically “doctoring” each page of the Dobbs ruling, removing words to reveal messages about the histories, harms, and hopes entailed in the Court’s seismic changes to US reproductive law.

Developing this gallery has been a cathartic mix of creative play and critique, as well as an act of hope. I offer Doctoring Dobbs as a contribution to ongoing conversations about reproductive rights and justice, and as an invitation to experiment with erasing to reveal.

Please read on if you’d like to learn more about this project, and thank you for visiting!

What is Erasure? In simple terms, erasure is a creative process that removes material from an existing source to reveal something new. The word comes from the Latin root –radare, which means to scrape off or remove. Artists have been practicing erasure methods on found objects for decades, perhaps centuries. Countless sources have been erased, from charcoal drawings to dictionary entries to the Declaration of Independence, each generating new meaning with what remains. Erasure goes by other names, like found poetry, deletion, redaction, refraction, and obliteration. It enjoys diverse audiences, from museumgoers to Instagram-scrollers, and beyond. Below is a list of some of the erasure artists whose work has inspired mine.       

How I Came to Erasure. I first encountered erasure years ago during a talk delivered by Robin Coste Lewis, who discussed the genre’s racial politics and antiracist potential. Soon after the Dobbs ruling, erasure came to mind while listening to a podcast on a long drive. Writer Austin Kleon was speaking to an interviewer about his book, Newspaper Blackout, a compilation of erasure poems he made from excerpts of the New York Times and a black marker. “I didn’t know what I was doing, or why,” he writes in the book’s preface. “All I knew was that it was fun to watch those words disappear behind that fat black marker line. It didn’t feel like work, it felt like play.”

What is Dobbs? Dobbs is a 2022 legal opinion from the US Supreme Court that overturned nearly fifty years of federally protected abortion rights and implicates many more, from LGBTQ+ rights to health privacy protections to employment benefits. Dobbs has created immeasurable legal chaos and social harm in the year since it was decided.

Accessing abortion after Dobbs has required people to navigate rapidly changing state policies, spend more money, travel farther, and experience graver risks to their health and well-being. Many are bearing forced pregnancies in a country that has egregiously high infant and maternal mortality rates, especially for Black and Brown people, no universal parental leave or childcare, and inaccessible supports for mental health.

People who are young, trans, gender expansive, undocumented, low-income, precariously housed, and/or of color are bearing the brunt of these harms, as was true before Dobbs

How I Came to Erasure. Compelled by its simple premise and the promise of play, I began erasing. I first marked up beloved magazines, then random prompts from my partner, later instructions for self-managing abortion. I experimented with markers on paper, though I enjoyed a digital pen on a tablet most. I erased with various goals: to amplify, to subvert, to connect, to honor, to deviate, to destroy. I imagined erasing other things, like medication inserts, product advertisements, Reddit forums, historic speeches, diary entries, and political testimony.

Deep play induced deep reflection: Who gets to erase? When should I work with or against a source, or not at all? How does the violent use of erasure within oppressive systems (e.g., colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, racism, patriarchy) relate to its creative counterpart? What needs removing and what needs revealing? This deep reflection seeded ideas for Doctoring Dobbs. 

Starting with a few ingredients—a free PDF of the 79-page ruling, a tablet (iPad and Apple pencil), and image editing software (ProCreate)—I began to alter each page of Dobbs, in sequential order. At first a private endeavor with no goal beyond creative immersion, I shared early examples on social media and eventually applied for funding to curate an online gallery.

How I Came to Erasure. Compelled by its simple premise and the promise of play, I began erasing. I first marked up beloved magazines, then random prompts from my partner, later instructions for self-managing abortion. I experimented with markers on paper, though I enjoyed a digital pen on a tablet most. I erased with various goals: to amplify, to subvert, to connect, to honor, to deviate, to destroy. I imagined erasing other things, like medication inserts, product advertisements, Reddit forums, historic speeches, diary entries, and political testimony.

Deep play induced deep reflection: Who gets to erase? When should I work with or against a source, or not at all? How does the violent use of erasure within oppressive systems (e.g., colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, racism, patriarchy) relate to its creative counterpart? What needs removing and what needs revealing? This deep reflection seeded ideas for Doctoring Dobbs. 

Starting with a few ingredients—a free PDF of the 79-page ruling, a tablet (iPad and Apple pencil), and image editing software (ProCreate)—I began to alter each page of Dobbs, in sequential order. At first a private endeavor with no goal beyond creative immersion, I shared early examples on social media and eventually applied for funding to curate an online gallery.

What is “Doctoring”? Doctoring means both the altering of a text (to amend) as well as how a skilled healer remedies an ailment (to mend). The poems collected here “doctor” Dobbs in both senses of the word by revealing the violences of state power and the vital role of reproductive justice in realizing a more just world. 

  • Amending: The poems amend Dobbs to create new meaning by visually changing the existing text. Amending has special meaning in the context of law, where altering a legal document results in amendments, and thus feels like a good way to describe the process of erasing a Supreme Court opinion.
  • Mending: Relatedly, the poems mend by drawing attention to the importance of healing in social justice movements, especially within reproductive justice. Conceived originally by women of color activists, reproductive justice focuses on creating the social, economic, and other structural conditions that ensure the collective thriving of all. To thrive, advocates teach that we must acknowledge and abolish harmful systems—colonialism, racism, capitalism, patriarchy, queer and trans-phobia, etcetera—as well as tend the wounds these systems cause. Doctoring Dobbs takes up this call by using the art of erasure to call out violent legacies that undermine everyone’s ability to thrive, and to emphasize messages of collective power, care, and healing. 

Acts of Hope. “Doing and making are acts of hope,” taught Corita Kent, an artist, activist, and former nun whose work deeply inspires mine. I found that erasure—the art of undoing and re-making—can be an act of hope too. Without knowing what I was looking for, Doctoring Dobbs revealed to me that we—by which I mean anyone living within harmful, unjust systems—are the otherwise. We are our own medicine and our fire cannot be unlit. Let’s take a breath. And dance, and dream, and surge

 

“We are each other’s sources”
– Corita Kent, Learning by Heart

acknowledgements

I am grateful to the many sources of inspiration and support for this project.

Thank you to all who fight for reproductive justice through activism, advocacy, scholarship, and teaching, especially:

 

Thank you to erasure artists, especially:

 

Thank you to the creative collaborators who nurtured me and this project, especially: 

  • Hallie Wells, who provided conceptual and creative encouragement from seed to fruition
  • Ronja Jansz, who developed and designed this website
  • Shanthony Exum, who illustrated the landing page image and logo
  • Matt Katz, who buoys me in all way through companionship in life and play

Thank you to this project’s generous funder, the Enhancing Research in the Arts & Humanities grant of Purdue University’s College of Liberal Arts.

Thank you to the creative collaborators who nurtured me and this project, especially: 

  • Hallie Wells, who provided conceptual and creative encouragement from seed to fruition
  • Ronja Jansz, who developed and designed this website
  • Shanthony Exum, who illustrated the landing page image and logo
  • Matt Katz, who buoys me in all way through companionship in life and play.

Thank you to this project’s generous funder, the Enhancing Research in the Arts & Humanities grant of Purdue University’s College of Liberal Arts.