DARE · Abortion in European Mainstream News Media: A Feminist Critical Socio-Cognitive Discourse Study

The debate over the access to sexual and reproductive health and rights has been going on for centuries. In Europe, the right to bodily autonomy has been included in the EU Fundamental Rights Charter very recently, in April 2024. This decision has taken place in a context where social and political landscapes remain divided between those who support and those who oppose free, safe, and legal access to abortion. Given that the news is a major source of information for citizens and influences public opinion and attitudes, Project DARE aims to critically examine how the polarisation surrounding the abortion debate has been discursively manifested in contemporary European mainstream news media discourse. DARE is characterised by an interdisciplinary approach that integrates quantitative corpus-based methods with qualitative discourse analysis to study the polarising discourse strategies used to conceptualise abortion and its related social actors in four major European news websites. As a feminist critical socio-cognitive study, DARE will take into account the potential influence of the context, ideological and gender biases, discrimination, and stigma in the reproduction of polarising discourses and attitudes towards abortion. DARE will be the first interdisciplinary project to compile and critically analyse a corpus of news articles on abortion published during the pandemic and post-pandemic period (2020-2025). Through this work, DARE aims to fulfil its overarching feminist goals of normalising abortion and advocating for reproductive justice in contemporary society. By addressing the timely issues of health and well-being, and gender equality, DARE will contribute to constructing a resilient, inclusive, and democratic European society, in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Horizon Europe 2023/2024 Programme.