2025/06/11 by Malgorzata Wiktoria Olsza · 2 voices
Social Sciences · #Intellectual Property Law
paper · doi:10.16995/cg.17501
openalex publication_date 2025/06/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.This article discusses two American pro-choice comics in the wider context of graphic biofiction. One is the now legendary Joyce Farmer and Lyn Chevli’s Abortion Eve (1973) and the other is Leah Hayes’s Not Funny Ha Ha: A Handbook for Something Hard (2015). While both texts were published 40 years apart, they are united in their interweaving of the real and the dramatized to tell a story of choice. The article argues that both comics invent/create an ‘everywoman,’ a character whose struggles are empathetic, and in that sense ‘generic,’ enough to make her relatable. Respectively, behind every ‘everywoman’ there lie real stories of individuals whose identity remains hidden, often for fear of public shaming. The methodological framework which comprises biofiction, comics, and feminist studies is further rooted in the bios and zóé distinction, where (every)woman’s story as a reproductive body (zóéfiction) clashes with her selfhood (biofiction). The article argues that how the character and their bodily autonomy are represented in both comics inspires reflection on the role and agency of women in general in the (post) Roe v. Wade United States.