In political discourse research, the polarising issue of abortion rights in the U.S. context has received insufficient scholarly attention. This is surprising given the prominent role that the issue has played in the American political scenario since at least the early 1970s. When, on Friday 24th June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Center, overturning the historical precedent made in the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, abortion ceased to be a Constitutionally protected, fundamental right in the United States of America. This recent development calls for an urgent investigation of the anti- and pro-abortion discourses in the U.S. context. This paper focuses on both pro- and anti-abortion political actors and their contribution to shaping the debate around abortion rights in America. More specifically, the study is concerned with the ways in which U.S. Congress members position themselves as political actors in an attempt to create key narratives that support their work of attempting either to legalise or criminalise abortion care. The dataset analysed comprises two sub-corpora of nonlegislative one-minute speeches on the topic of abortion delivered on the House Floor during the 1st session of the 117th U.S. Congress (between January 3, 2021 to January 3, 2022) and 2nd session of the 117th Congress (between January 3, 2022 to January 3, 2023). The study examines the linguistic means the individual Congress members rely on in order not only to engage in but also create specific discourses around the topic of abortion, at the same time as they perform and reinforce their own political positioning.
