Criminalization of Women Accessing Abortion and Enforced Mobility within the European Union and the United Kingdom

Abstract

The article explores the impact of criminalization and restricted abortion access in Poland, Italy, and parts of the United Kingdom. We look at the ways in which the partial and extensive criminalization of abortion in the European Union and in the United Kingdom forces women to travel to access abortion care. At the core of our considerations is the interconnection of issues pertaining to criminalization and movement with citizenship, bodily integrity and autonomy, and the nation-state. By tracing these connections through an analysis of existing laws and scholarship, our concern here is to ask what discursive, narrative and theoretical resources feminist scholars might draw on and help co-produce in framing the interstices of criminalization of abortion and enforced mobility.

Keywords:

• Abortion
• enforced mobility
• EU
• nation-state
• reproduction
• women

Notes

1 It is important to note that most laws regarding abortion remain specifically gendered; thus, while pregnancy and with it abortion care are issues of importance to transmasculine citizens, the specificity of the legal framework requires our attention to the category of ‘women’.

2 In the formerly colonised Republic of Ireland, this law was further supplemented by the 8^th Amendment of the Constitution of the Republic of Ireland giving equal rights to ‘the unborn’ as to the pregnant woman, with far-reaching consequences predicated on its legal and medical interpretations. The repeal of ‘the 8^th’ in May 2018 can be seen as both a finishing point and an opening of a new chapter, in ROI’s long march to reproductive freedom.

3 In discrepancy with Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929, which set the legal bounds for foetal viability and hence ‘life’ at 28 weeks.

4 R.R. v. Poland, No. 27617/04 Eur. Ct. H.R., paras. 159-160 (2011); P. and S. v. Poland, No. 57375/0 Eur. Ct. H.R. (2012); Tysiaç v. Poland, No. 5410/03 Eur. Ct. H.R. (2007).

5 In November 2016, Polish government approved a regulation offering pregnant women carrying a seriously disabled or unviable foetus a one-time payment of approx. €1,000 to carry the pregnancy to term.

6 Simultaneously, the Radical Party was able to put forward a referendum expanding the law to private providers and improving provision for minors; this was defeated with 88% voting against the motion (Andall 1994).