They are leveraging authoritarian mechanisms to achieve their aims.
By Matthew A. McIntosh
Public Historian
Brewminate
Introduction
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), which overturned Roe v. Wade, a new era of anti-abortion activism has taken root — one increasingly marked by authoritarian tactics. While the pro-life movement has always operated across legal, cultural, and religious battlegrounds, the post-Dobbs landscape has emboldened activists and lawmakers to pursue strategies that not only restrict reproductive rights but also erode democratic principles in the process.
These tactics range from surveillance and intimidation to censorship and the consolidation of power, echoing methods more often associated with authoritarian regimes than democratic societies. What follows is an examination of how anti-abortion activists and their political allies are leveraging authoritarian mechanisms to achieve their aims.
Criminalization and Surveillance
One of the most direct authoritarian tactics involves turning private reproductive decisions into matters of state surveillance and criminal enforcement. In states with near-total bans, such as Texas, Louisiana, and Idaho, legislators have passed or proposed laws that:
- Criminalize abortion providers and patients, sometimes with felony charges that include lengthy prison sentences.
- Create bounty systems, such as Texas’s SB8, which empowers private citizens to sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion — incentivizing vigilante surveillance and social distrust.
- Seek to monitor menstrual cycles or pregnancy outcomes, with digital data like period-tracking apps, search histories, and text messages being considered admissible in legal proceedings.
These practices echo the panopticon-style surveillance structures found in authoritarian states. They transform everyday activities into potential liabilities and encourage communities to self-police based on fear and suspicion.
Erosion of Judicial Neutrality and Legal Pluralism
Another authoritarian marker is the strategic capture of the judicial system to render it a tool of ideological enforcement rather than neutral adjudication. Anti-abortion activists have succeeded in stacking courts, especially at the state level, with ideologically aligned judges willing to reinterpret laws with maximalist anti-choice readings.
For example:
- In states like Florida and Oklahoma, courts have upheld sweeping abortion bans by reinterpreting constitutional privacy clauses in ways that strip them of their original democratic intent.
- Federal judges, such as Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas — a known conservative ideologue — have attempted to unilaterally ban FDA-approved abortion drugs like mifepristone, overriding decades of scientific and regulatory consensus.
This undermines the rule of law by replacing legal reasoning with theological or political doctrine, often bypassing public accountability.
Censorship and the Suppression of Dissent
Authoritarian regimes often control narratives by restricting what information citizens can access. Anti-abortion efforts increasingly mimic this with attempts to suppress reproductive health information and criminalize speech.
Examples include:
- Banning or blocking websites that provide information on medication abortion or out-of-state services, as seen in proposals in Missouri and Texas.
- Censoring educational materials, particularly in public schools, that cover reproductive health or even mention abortion as a healthcare option.
- Threatening journalists and educators who disseminate pro-choice content, under the guise of obscenity or moral corruption.
This aggressive suppression of information violates core First Amendment principles and aims to keep populations ignorant and compliant — hallmarks of authoritarian control.
Militarization and the Use of Force
Physical coercion and intimidation have long been part of the anti-abortion playbook, from clinic blockades to the murder of abortion providers. In recent years, this has escalated, with activists:
- Harassing patients and medical personnel at clinics, often emboldened by a lack of police enforcement or even local protection laws.
- Terrorizing providers with death threats, doxing, and targeted violence.
- Advocating for the death penalty for abortion, a measure seriously entertained by legislators in states like South Carolina and Louisiana.
Authoritarian regimes typically consolidate power through force or the credible threat of it. The same principle is now applied to reproductive healthcare: make it so dangerous that even if it is technically legal in some areas, people are too afraid to access or provide it.
Theocratic Governance and Erosion of Secularism
A defining feature of modern authoritarianism — especially theocratic variants — is the blending of state and religious power. Many anti-abortion activists operate from a Christian nationalist framework, aiming not merely to ban abortion but to reshape society according to conservative evangelical values.
This is evident in:
- Legislation explicitly invoking religious doctrine rather than secular rationale.
- Faith-based crisis pregnancy centers receiving state funding while offering deceptive, medically false information to vulnerable individuals.
- Politicians invoking divine authority to justify laws, framing dissent as not only unpatriotic but ungodly.
Such measures betray the constitutional commitment to a secular republic and instead pursue a coercive moral order based on religious orthodoxy.
Disenfranchisement and Democratic Backsliding
To cement anti-abortion laws that are often deeply unpopular, activists and allied politicians have embraced a broader campaign to suppress democratic participation:
- Gerrymandering state legislatures to ensure permanent right-wing control despite public opposition to abortion bans.
- Voter suppression tactics, including strict ID laws, reduced polling locations, and roll purges disproportionately targeting marginalized communities — the same communities most affected by abortion restrictions.
- Preemption laws that prevent cities or counties from enacting more progressive reproductive policies.
When movements seek to limit the scope of electoral input and public will, they are engaging in anti-democratic, authoritarian behavior — seeking power that is not contingent on consent but enforced regardless of it.
Conclusion: A Democratic Crisis in Disguise
While framed as a moral or cultural issue, the anti-abortion movement’s current trajectory is fundamentally authoritarian. It relies on surveillance, criminalization, suppression of dissent, coercive violence, religious dogmatism, and democratic erosion to impose minority rule on the majority. It is not simply a fight about when life begins — it is about who holds power and how they wield it.
Reproductive freedom is not only a matter of personal liberty but a cornerstone of democratic health. As such, opposing these authoritarian tactics is not just about defending abortion rights — it is about defending democracy itself.
Originally published by Brewminate, 05.12.2025, under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
