The study “My body, my voice: Analyzing news sources in the Roe v. Wade Reversal” by Stefanie E. Davis Kempton from Penn State Altoona was a textual analysis of the news coverage in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal with attention towards the people used as news sources.
As is widely known, the Roe vs Wade Supreme Court case from 1973 made abortion legal on the grounds that preventing it would violate the woman’s right to privacy. It was controversial and much opposed by pro-lifers – the opponents of abortion.
On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Dobbs vs. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization that the U.S. Constitution does not, in fact, confer a woman’s right to abortion. This basically overturned Roe vs. Wade, making abortion not a federal right but a decision for each state to make.
As alluded, abortion is one of the most divisive political issues in the US, yet covering it in news is difficult, according to studies by Sisson and others. The difficulty is due to several factors: the extensive research required, inability to find interviewees who could explain the issue in understandable ways, and the lack of a designated “face” for the issue.
When it comes to sources, a large study by Armstrong and Boyle (2011) analyzing news coverage from 1960 to 2006 found out that despite abortion being called a ‘woman’s issue’, male sources significantly outnumbered the women both before and after Roe vs. Wade.
This study had three research questions that were based on previous literature:
RQ1: What types of people (i.e., politicians, citizens, celebrities) are frequently quoted in news coverage of recent legislation on abortion?
RQ2: What role does gender play in the news sources chosen?
RQ3: Is there a difference in news sourcing between the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal?
The method involved gathering news articles from The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, from June 24, 2022, and July 2, 2022, for each newspaper. The total sample, after filtering, was 104 articles. Then, a textual analysis was conducted by the research team looking for news sources – any quotes attributed to people, who were then identified.
The news coverage of the overturning of Roe vs Wade was most often framed politically and domestic (US) politicians were quoted the most. However, when the categories were other than politicians, females were quoted more frequently. In politicians, it is the reverse, with male politicians quoted more often on over than 2:1 ratio.
Between the newspapers, there were no statistically significant differences in sourcing apart from the fact that Wall Street Journal was more likely to quote male medical experts.
In conclusion, the results show that male politicians still dominate the discussion about women’s reproductive rights (abortion). The overturning of Roe vs Wade allowed the opportunity for the newspapers to shed the past male dominance on the issue, but this did not come to pass except that non-politicians were more likely female. It is also interesting that the papers were so similar in coverage and sourcing.
According to the author, the findings are important, because they show how little progress has been made since Roe vs. Wade 1973 when it comes to who talks about abortion, despite the gains in women’s rights in the decades.
Possible future research could be conducted after more time has passed since the reversal, or on other mediums such as social media and television.
The article “My body, my voice: Analyzing news sources in the Roe v. Wade Reversal” by Stefanie E. Davis Kempton is in Newspaper Research Journal. (open access).
Picture: US Supreme Court Building. By Tim Mossholder.
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