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Abstract
This paper develops the concept of ‘abortion exile’ to understand the situation of women who are forced to travel for abortion services because the procedure is outlawed, stigmatized, unaffordable or otherwise inaccessible in their place of residence. A number of legislative, economic, and moral mechanisms conspire to deny women abortion rights at home such that they must journey within and across national borders in pursuit of needed abortion care. While anthropologists have examined the movement of women and men in search of fertility care that is unavailable at home, attention to the situation of women forced to relocate to terminate an untenable pregnancy is surprisingly scarce. Taking Mexico's fractured abortion landscape as an ethnographic starting place, this paper examines the experiences of women made to venture to the capital for legal abortion services because the procedure is criminalised and difficult to access elsewhere in the country. The concept of ‘abortion exile’ can helpfully explain the forced movement, political status and subjective experiences of women in different world regions where abortion rights are limited, absent, or under threat, and for whom reproductive citizenship remains elusive.
Acknowledgements
Thanks go to the women who agreed to share their stories about the challenges they faced accessing safe abortion. I am grateful to Daniel Jordan Smith for help with conceptualization and to Eric Seymour for assistance generating the heat map.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
The US National Science Foundation; a Wenner-Gren Foundation; the US National Institute of Health Training Grant; and the American Association for University Women.