Towards a Political Geography of Abortion

Calkin, S.

Abstract

This article introduces a political geography of abortion, arguing that abortion access is an essential but overlooked site where gendered mechanisms of state control are enforced and contested. Today, abortion access is currently in the midst of a significant spatial transformation: advances in technology, medicine, and activist tactics are currently changing the geographies of abortion and working to weaken the link between access to abortion and national legal frameworks. In response to these challenges to state control over reproduction, states are responding with new tactics to re-assert authority over pregnancy and abortion. However, these changes remain under-researched in the geographical literature, which tends to sustain a focus on state-law and inter-state travel. The forces currently transforming abortion access exceed these analytical frameworks: we require a multi-scalar and scale-jumping account of the relationship between pro-choice activists and anti-choice states. This article makes the case for a political geography of abortion that moves beyond a state-based framework to account for changing patterns of resistance and restriction on abortion. The arguments are developed through two cases: mobile abortion clinics at sea and telemedicine abortion technology, both of which demonstrate the contestation over abortion rights at the sub- and supra-state levels.

Citation

Calkin, S. (2019). Towards a Political Geography of Abortion. Political Geography, 69, 22-29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2018.11.006

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 19, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Dec 10, 2018
• Publication Date: Mar 31, 2019
• Deposit Date: Nov 28, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 10, 2020
• Journal: Political Geography
• Print ISSN: 0962-6298
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 69
• Pages: 22-29
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2018.11.006