Chapter 7: Being an Activist: Material Religion, Embodiment and Spatiality

This chapter investigates the very specific ways anti-abortion activists engage their campaign in public spaces, with particular emphasis given to locations in the vicinity of abortion services (e.g. standalone abortion clinics and hospitals). The first part of the chapter examines the forms of lived religion engaged with, the material objects utilised and how a pious body is cultivated through embodied practices. Material forms of lived religion were crucial to how the activism was conveyed, and we will examine in some detail the material objects connected with anti-abortion activism, comprising various artefacts, including prayer books, miraculous medals, shopping bags depicting the Virgin Mary, and hand-made items of clothing. Specific emphasis will be given to the status accorded Our Lady of Guadalupe as the icon of the anti-abortion campaign for many Catholics. One of the most significant material objects used was rosary beads. The prayer practice of the Rosary centralises Mary. It started around the fourteenth century, at a time of Marian prominence, and remains a popular practice amongst all varieties of Catholics, from liberal to conservative; historically it also played a significant part in marking out a distinctly Catholic identity as opposed to Protestantism (Mitchell, 2009). We will argue that the Rosary was utilised so readily at vigil sites because it is related to the significant status accorded Mary in the anti-abortion campaign. The very explicit religious positioning of their activism – using prayer, prayer books, rosary beads, and invoking powerful allies like the Virgin Mary and Jesus – emphasises how this was specifically grounded as a religious exercise, and a means of engaging their godly commitments in a belief system which understood God as being fundamentally opposed to abortion (see Chapter 4). The second part of the chapter focuses on the geographies of activism and how space was specifically utilised for their campaign. We will give specific attention to the kinds of practices engaged with, such as pavement counselling, which is an explicit tactic in trying to dissuade people from utilising the clinic services.