Rebecca Lentjes, University of Kentucky
“Ultra/Sound: The Antiabortion Weaponization of Sonic Vitalism.”
In-person lecture, delivered in WLH 207.
Thursday, March 26th, 2026, 4 pm.
Co-sponsored by American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
This talk examines how the United States antiabortion movement wields obstetric technology, such as ultrasound and fetal cardiac activity tests, as a tool for subjugating pregnant people. Through a process I term sonic vitalism, the antiabortion movement successfully politicizes and weaponizes acoustic technology, lending credibility to the fiction of fetal personhood and then broadcasting it in the medical, legal, and sociocultural spheres. Antiabortion sonic vitalism engenders not only a discursive construction of the fetus-as-person, but also a lived reality in which pregnant people are literally denied healthcare every day.
Rebecca “Reb” Lentjes is a PhD candidate and instructor in Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Kentucky. Reb’s dissertation examines the ongoing proliferation of antiabortion violence and reproductive injustice in the US, focusing on the antiabortion movement’s weaponization of sound, music, affect, and rhetoric. Reb is also a case manager and peer counselor for three abortion healthlines.