Wounded Healers: Abortion and the Affective Practices of Pro-Life Health Care.

This article examines the role of emotional experiences and narratives in shaping post-Roe anti-abortion activism among former abortion providers and post-abortion counselors in the United States. It highlights how physicians like Beverly McMillan and Bernard Nathanson combined medical expertise and emerging fetal research ("fetology") with affective connections to the fetus to frame abortion as morally and emotionally harmful, leading to their pro-life conversions. The concept of Post-abortion Syndrome (PAS), though not recognized by mainstream medicine, emerged within pro-life circles to describe psychological distress after abortion, with counselors such as Susan Stanford-Rue using Christian-informed therapeutic practices to guide healing through acknowledgment of fetal personhood. The article argues that while pro-life activists employed scientific language and medical authority to legitimize their stance, it was their emotional and ideological frameworks—the "pro-life narrative"—that fundamentally shaped and sustained their anti-abortion activism and influenced political and legal efforts to restrict abortion access.