Information Labour and Shame in Farmer and Chevli’s Abortion Eve

This article conducts the first in-depth political-aesthetic analysis of Joyce Farmer and Lyn Chevli’s Abortion Eve. In this article we argue that Abortion Eve uses its visual form in a way that cuts between the contexts of later forms of graphic medicine and feminist comix, and in so doing contributed to a political culture of feminist information sharing, through a self-published visual medium.

Thus far, the limited literature on Abortion Eve has sought to historicize the work, placing cultural context at the fore and situating the work within the Wimmen's Comix movement. In particular, critics such as Andrew Kunka tend to relegate Farmer and Chevli's work to the realm of "Autobiographical Comics", a familiar move when dealing with literature written by women (Kunka, 2018, p. 110), albeit one that can nonetheless be an empowering form of self-representation (Gilmore, 2000;Heilbrun, 1994). 3 Despite this dearth of critical material, the prominence and visibility of Abortion Eve is set only to grow, as evidenced by its recent republication in an anthology with Penn State Press (Johnson and Squier, 2018).
In this article, we take a different tack to existing secondary approaches. Rather than pursuing solely the broadly autobiographical and socio-legalistic lines along which Abortion Eve has been chased, we instead argue that this work uses its visual form in a way that cuts between and pre-empts the contexts of later forms of graphic medicine and feminist comix. Certainly, for the authors, the aesthetic is entwined, in Abortion Eve, with information delivery. Created on a tight budget and self-published through their own "Nanny Goat Productions", Farmer and Chevli opt for a straightforward narrative arc that conveys information that, they believed, would be of interest to 'the typical range of women [they] would see before [them] at the clinic' that they ran (Farmer, 2017). While this plotline can often seem to take the form of soap-opera dialogue or the agony-aunt pages of a women's magazine -as characters share their personal, marital, financial, and employment details with the group (and, thereby, the reader) -medical information is also carefully imparted. Further, the melodrama and apparent cliché of this text is in keeping with the prevailing aesthetic of many underground comix of the period and should be seen through such a historicist lens. 3 It is also nonetheless undeniably true that Kunka is correct and that personal experience here played a role, although Abortion Eve was compiled from a range of women's experiences beyond those of the authors. That said, in 1970, Farmer's own struggle to obtain an abortion led her to experience firsthand the psychological damage caused to many women as a result of an unwanted pregnancy. Having been denied an abortion within the state of California -a psychiatric evaluation found her medically fit to be a mother -Farmer underwent what she terms the 'radicalisation' that led to Abortion Eve.
Indeed, Farmer recalls how she had to make suicide threats in order to be taken seriously and how she 'was astounded that [she] had to prove to the state that [she] was suicidal, when all [she] wanted was an abortion, clean and safe' (Farmer, 2011).

McGovern and Eve: Information Labour and Shame in Farmer and Chevli's Abortion Eve
Art. 6, page 3 of 28 Further, aesthetically, as we go on to argue, Abortion Eve's contribution to the influx of self-information assisted in deconstructing the patriarchal medical practitioner information of the 1960s and 70s, challenging and rebalancing this ownership over the creation of and access to knowledge. Indeed, Abortion Eve's use of the medium of the sequential narrative to relay medical information perfectly fits the criteria for a work of graphic medicine, a term coined by Ian Williams in 2007.
For Williams, this sub-genre of graphic narrative contains a ' combin [ation] [of] the principles of narrative medicine with an exploration of the visual systems of comic art [to] interrogat[e] the representation of physical and emotional signs and symptoms within the medium' (Czerwiec et al. 2015, p. 1). Farmer and Chevli's comic, in discussing the determiners of pregnancy, such as pelvic exams and urine samples, as well as the types of abortions available based on expense and length of term, allow it to be placed as an early example of this form. In addition, the text's pro-choice stance is clear and congruent with a medical ethic of informed consent: abortion is not conveyed as the sole solution but merely one option of many, with single-parenthood and adoption also considered. Abortion Eve thus stands apart from the healthcare discourses of its time by working through 'the medical aspects of an abortion, and the steps one must follow to end a pregnancy safely,' as part of a visual conversation in a sequential narrative format (Farmer, 2016).
At the same time, however, Abortion Eve's subtexts challenge the boundaries and categorisation of graphic medicine in a way that is far more politicised than other texts within this sub-genre, particularly at its year of publication. While Abortion Eve can be read as a work of graphic medicine, it differs from the self-reflective graphic-medical memoirs produced in the twenty-first century, where narratives tend to be more singular and personal, rather than offering a narrative comprised of a collection of voices. Aligning itself with women's healthcare activists of the time who strove to challenge the perceptions of those who 'viewed [abortion] as a medical problem, not as a women's rights problem,' Farmer and Chevli's text argued for women's control over their own bodies and fates and thus contributed a more politicised agenda -across feminist lines -to the historical development of the graphic medicine sub-genre (Kaplan, 1997, p. 23). In expanding the discussion of abortion

Abortion Eve and Radical Graphic Literature of the 1970s
Despite our desire to move beyond purely socio-historical approaches, before we turn to our thematic and aesthetic analyses, it remains nonetheless necessary to give a brief contextual background to the material circumstances that led to the publication of Abortion Eve. By way of synopsis, the text follows the individual journeys of five women who meet at an abortion clinic, from their initial appointment to the termination itself. While the characters are homogenised by the fact that their names are all derived from "Eve" (Evelyn, Eve, Evita etc.), the comix takes great pains to depict an unwanted pregnancy as something that can affect all women regardless of age, race and socio-economic background. This diversity (demonstrated from the very beginning on the front page of the publication, as per Figure 1) can be seen in the fact that Evelyn, Eve, and Evita are already mothers, working professionals and are white, Black and Hispanic respectively, while they also reflect a demographic of older women seeking abortion.  (Campbell, 2013). Initially the co-authors wished to produce more of a '"get even" kind of violence' within their comix: essentially Zap for women (Mavrides et al. 2014). 5 However they both soon 'realised that neither of [them] wanted to put that kind of violence in' Tits & Clits and felt themselves 'incapable of it' (Farmer, 2017).
Following this approach, Farmer and Chevli turned not to the inverse of misogynistic violence, but instead used the threatening status of the female body and menstrual blood to challenge a male readership. Farmer states of Tits & Clits that: 'We ended up doing a different kind of violence it turned out, although we didn't think so at the time, which was dealing with menstrual blood and mentioning menstruation and birth control and things men didn't seem to think about at all at that time' (Campbell, 2013).
In this way, Farmer and Chevli moved from explicit violence on the page to the perceived threat to masculinity from the female body. This itself centres around the idea that 'the experience of knowing oneself' -perhaps in both the implied terms of masturbatory experience but also as a broader precept of female bodily self-knowledge -should be considered 'shameful, as an abject existence that is messy and disgusting' (Young, 2005, p. 109 Abortion Eve succinctly sums up this predicament -that women's bodies are both threatening to men but also a threat to women themselves -in the two panels shown below (Figure 2) that highlight motherhood's restrictions on freedom. The two women featured are both already mothers in the narrative, hence their opinion is supposed to be informed by incontestable prior experience. Evelyn in the left-hand panel exclaims 'you never have a moment's freedom!' and appears harried at the prospect of a life where 'the simplest trip to the grocery store has to be planned like a military campaign!' Meanwhile, Eve in the right panel, with her focused gaze and pursed lips, expresses a determination to be in charge of her life and her future. Her mind is decided and she will not be swayed in her decision, thus her statement; 'the moment you decide not to have an abortion, that kid is going to determine your life' becomes a surety rather than a possibility.
The constraining implications of these panels are highlighted by the background shading at the top of each image. Resembling horizontal imprisoning bars that grow denser as they move away from the speakers, the frame also entirely contains the female characters, giving a sense of claustrophobia. Indeed, the framing of the women in head and shoulder shots mimics the well-known arrest "mug-shot"

McGovern and Eve: Information Labour and Shame in Farmer and Chevli's Abortion Eve
Art. 6, page 9 of 28 formulation, thereby also gesturing towards incarceration. At the same time, the callout elements overlap into the gutter, implying that dialogue and information sharing among women -the key aspects of Abortion Eve -are able to transcend the female captivity that unwanted pregnancy engenders. That women's speech should do graphic damage in bursting the frame is another form of alternative, retributive, and just violence against socio-carceral-corporeal systems explored by the comic, here embodied in the female speech act and that we will shortly link to paradigms of labour and shame. It is also notable, in these frames, that the women's figures displace the background shading with distinct spacing around the characters. This at once summons both the religiosity of the halo, thereby again sacrilegiously playing on the biblical resonances of the text's eponymous figures, while also bestowing an agency upon the speaking figures, whose words float above the "bars".

Gendered Divisions of Information Labour and Knowledge Creation
If the timing and context of Abortion Eve's release was crucial, this social milieu is most textually pronounced in the work's breakdown of gendered divisions of labour, particularly around the gatekeeping of medical information. At a time when 'very little information on women's bodies or abortion had been produced for lay readers' (Kline, 2010, p. 71), the text aimed to speak on a personal, singular level to women who required information regarding abortion. For instance, the characters discuss a pelvic examination, noting that 'a pelvic examination is when the doctor examines your "inside" female parts' (Chevli and Farmer, 1973, p. 5); there is a conversation about local and general anaesthesia (Chevli and Farmer, 1973, p. 8); an explanation of the cervix (Chevli and Farmer, 1973, p. 8); notes on the psychological counselling service (Chevli and Farmer, 1973, p. 9); warnings about blood clots (Chevli and Farmer, 1973, p. 12); a discussion about sterilisation (Chevli and Farmer, 1973, p. 13); a section on anaemia (Chevli and Farmer, 1973, p. 22); a panel on the RhoGam shot (Chevli and Farmer, 1973, p. 27); and even information on blood pressure after an

McGovern and Eve: Information Labour and Shame in Farmer and Chevli's Abortion Eve
Art. 6, page 10 of 28 abortion (Chevli and Farmer, 1973, p. 28). Indeed, the medical information sharing of Abortion Eve is absolutely central to the text.
In addition, though, of course, from at least one feminist perspective ' abortion [was seen] as integrally linked to the advancement of women and their liberation from traditional roles' (Doerflinger, 2004, p. 50  Chevli use curlicue fonts and a personal, conversational tone (shown in Figure 3) to satirically "target" women as their "readership" in the advertising prologue. Notably, however, for the authors, pro-choice does not here mean pro-abortion. Abortion is not advertised as a singular cure to the financial, familial, or marital problems the women discuss, nor is it represented as a solution to an unwanted pregnancy. In this sense, their material adheres to the so-called "rational" school of advertising popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whereby ' advertisers [appealed] to people's reasoning capacity' (Zuckerman, 1998, p. 66), thereby giving at least the semblance of free, rational choice.
Other comics on abortion have deployed similar techniques that can be situated within the history of the advertising industry. For instance, the turn of the century saw a move away from the visuality of the advert toward its psychological 'use of sug-  shown in dependent or subservient roles' (Gill, 2009, p. 418).
Although, as Heidi Hartmann notes from an overly essentialist 1976 perspective that demonstrates a common belief from the time, '[t]he division of labour by sex appears to have been universal throughout human history', it is curious that Farmer and Chevli should choose the gendered division of labour as their way of highlighting femininity (Hartmann, 1976). The decision is anchored, though, once more, in the realms of knowledge production and bodily power explored by the early Foucault: the patriarchal medical establishment. For 'nurses' is listed as a specifically female profession, even while ' doctors' are absent from the list for both men and women. This can also be seen when one considers the influential intertext for the delivery room because I didn't want him to see me exposed. And I was afraid he would never make love with me again.' This statement is almost in contradiction to that which accompanies perhaps the most harrowing image (Figures 4 and 5 below showing a comparative view) of Heyman herself undergoing an abortion, in which she states, 'Nothing ever made me feel more like a sex object than going through an abortion alone' (Vitello, 2013).
Heyman's image captures the photographer's emotionally and physically vulnerable position while undergoing a dilation and curettage abortion (for more, see Leonard, 2014, p. 89). In spite of this vulnerability, which places her below the near faceless man in surgeon's scrubs, there is a power conveyed in the image which is transmitted through its very capturing of the abortion procedure. In documenting the termination of her pregnancy Heyman regains control and ownership of the act from the male doctor carrying out the procedure. There is a partial facelessness to the abortion procedure conveyed by the nondescript room, anonymous surgeon, and similarly faceless Heyman. Indeed the only part of Heyman that the reader sees are her legs, and as the reader lies with Heyman, submissive to the patriarchal practitioner carrying out the abortion, the reader becomes both the faceless women who As can be seen from the comparative images from Abortion Eve in Figure 4, Heyman's image resonates strongly. The different approach that Farmer and Chevli take, though, is to reintroduce Eve's face into the frame. Indeed, the perspectival difference is subtle but profound. In addition to giving Eve that most-Levinasian feature for the recognition of the other -the face -in this panel in Abortion Eve, the surgeon is nonetheless still male. In this sense, the text interpellates the reader into Figure 5: Abigail Heyman undergoing an abortion (Heyman, 1974: 72-3).

McGovern and Eve: Information Labour and Shame in Farmer and Chevli's Abortion Eve
Art. 6, page 17 of 28 a new, quasi-space of agency, one in which Eve is re-personified -and thereby given more power -while she is still perhaps less active than the photographic agent in Wade, ' advis[ed] readers of the various regulations in place as well as the pending legislative and judicial actions in progress across the country' and were similarly instrumental in educating and discussing the still-shamed subject (Hinnant, 2016, p. 233).
The primary means by which these texts worked was in questioning the male-driven authority of a patriarchal medical labour establishment, through the circulation of information. However, the feelings of shame ordinarily associated with abortion were also being challenged by these new modes of communication.

Abortion, Shame, and Religion
The historical and cultural background to Abortion Eve foregrounds the link between sexuality and shame and the ways in which comix such as Tits & Clits worked to move away from a shaming culture to one in which women's sexuality was celebrated.

McGovern and Eve: Information Labour and Shame in Farmer and Chevli's Abortion Eve
Art. 6, page 18 of 28 For, as Megan Tagle Adams puts it, 'women have traditionally been positioned as sexual gatekeepers -as bearers of respectability and morality responsible for tempering men's urges,' highlighting the ways in which unwanted pregnancy as careless and promiscuous has been portrayed (Adams, 2016, p. 230).  (Clough, 2017, p. 79 (Cohen, 1988, pp. 177-8). Whether the concealment of identity is the personal preference of the woman or an aesthetic choice of broadcasters, the shame of abortion is nevertheless reinforced through the trope of facial hiding. Indeed, Cohen shows the parallel with media representations of drug addicts or paid informants. The media silhouetting and concealment of the face can be seen as a private acting out of shame projected on a large scale, as a way to protect the viewing public (or society), who is not yet ready to allow abortion to be visible, discussed or accepted as a viable option. Indeed, Claire Pajaczkowska and Ivan Ward's notion that to 'feel shame when we are completely exposed, conscious of being looked at and not ready to be visible' speaks on a larger, societal scale here (Pajaczkowska and Ward, 2008, p. 77 (Doerflinger, 2004, p. 52).
This conflict is something that Farmer and Chevli hoped to convey through their text. Joyce Farmer recalls that: 'Neither Lyn [Chevli] or I were Catholic and we had been impressed that so many young Catholic women had adopted the church teachings about the sanctity of life without question, and that these teachings would be something they had to re-consider in light of their currently pregnant status' (Farmer, 2017).
Farmer identifies the Catholic Church as 'the main organisation in America that was against the use of birth control' at the time of Abortion Eve's creation, and therefore she and Chevli felt it important to 'include a discussion of religious conflict in the [comix]'. This conflict is explicitly captured in the character of Evie who appears to represent 'many of the women [Farmer and Chevli] counselled [who] were heavily conflicted by the teachings of the church regarding their pregnancies.' Figure 6 indeed indicates the way in which personal and religious opposition is tackled, both visually and textually, in Abortion Eve. While readers note that Evie's heart shaped face, long blonde hair and pale complexion reinforce her youth they also ironically   Similarly, cutesy Junior's visual depiction is juxtaposed with language suggesting that mother and male practitioner (also seen in the panel) are ' already discussing how to kill him!' The implicating and pointed language of Who Killed Junior?'s panels serve to draw a purposeful link between pro-choice and murder.
Yet, it is also important to note that the shame-generation here finds its obverse mirror in Abortion Eve. Again turning to Figure 6 above, consider that the feelings of shame are accompanied by the threat of male violence and murder. Evie explicitly uses the phrase 'My father will kill me', which, regardless of how seriously one takes it, linguistically brings the murder of women by men into the frame. It is, indeed, an accountability of shame as the face of male violence and femicide that drives Abortion Eve's powerful medical and feminist retort to the discourse found in works such as Who Killed Junior?

Conclusion
In this article, we have advanced the first comparative analysis of the aesthetics of Farmer and Chevli's Abortion Eve, using original interview material for supplementary context. Locating the work between the underground comix scene and the women's information-healthcare movement, Abortion Eve sought not only to empower women through its knowledge-production function, but also aimed to position the comic as a serious form that was nonetheless accessible to a wide sector of society. This was not always easy. As Farmer, acknowledged, '[t]he comic form in America has suffered much from being "for children" or "not serious literature." Whatever we created had to buck the dismissive attitude toward the comic form and deal with criticism that we were disloyal to feminists for exposing some serious women's issues' (Farmer, 2017).
Yet, in considering its function as a pre-runner of contemporary graphic medicine alongside its self-published nature, Abortion Eve centres itself as an extremely early graphic medical herstory. This deconstruction of the contributors to information mark Abortion Eve as a significant milestone in the development of both underground comix, the rise of self-information and the growth of the graphic medium as a platform for intimate, personal narratives, thus allowing future, challenging,

McGovern and Eve: Information Labour and Shame in Farmer and Chevli's Abortion Eve
Art. 6, page 24 of 28 and controversial issues to be acknowledged and shared. Abortion Eve is, therefore, an important text not only for its political resonances, but also for its medical intersections. Farmer and Chevli, working within sex-positive traditions, show how complex political entanglements structure the ways in which information can be shared between women. In particular, we have examined here how a visual aesthetic of shame running through the work -and couched in etymological terms of hiding the face -forms an important touchstone for the more medically-oriented portions of the text.
Abortion Eve remains a relatively under-studied work. Yet, in this piece we have argued that such works -usually confined to specific genre brackets -should be taken seriously as aesthetic artforms, as political tracts, and as imparters of medical information. For as the personal remains ever political, Abortion Eve shows us the ways in which solidarity and information sharing through graphic media can empower.