| Popis: |
In recent decades, teen pregnancy prevention campaigns have become a political and cultural omnipresence, with celebrities and politicians joining the plea to stop teen girls from becoming teen moms. But in their messaging and rhetoric, these campaigns send powerful messages about why teen motherhood is immoral, how teen mothers have irrevocably ruined their lives, and why teen female sexuality is itself shameful. I will conduct a rhetorical analysis on three teen pregnancy prevention campaigns -- New York City Human Resources teen pregnancy prevention campaign, the Stay Teen campaign, and the Candie’s Foundation -- in order to trace both the use of shame and how shame is employed. My findings demonstrate these three campaigns shame teen mothers, framing them as immoral, lascivious, irresponsible agents, and blames them as responsible broader social ills like poverty and crime, rather than the governmental policies that politicians enact. Ultimately, I argue for a a shift away from teen pregnancy prevention as a construct and in its place, a comprehensive campaign to prevent all unplanned and unwanted pregnancies, one based in feminist understanding of bodily autonomy and access to the full spectrum of reproductive healthcare services. |
