Interviews on Abortion Access in Latin America, 2020-2022

Freeman, Cordelia (2024). Interviews on Abortion Access in Latin America, 2020-2022. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-856727

This research project concerns the spatiality of reproductive health in Latin America. I am interested in the spatial dynamics of abortion access and the ways in which abortion prohibition has been resisted using different technologies. My interest in mobility and the regulation of mobility takes into account both bodies that move and medication and medical technologies that are transported.

The project involves fieldwork in Mexico, Peru, and Argentina and is a qualitative project that mainly focuses on interviews with abortion activists and experts. It also has a significant focus on engaged research projects and non-academic outputs include a graphic novel about abortion in Mexico City, podcasts about abortion in Peru, and a global abortion database about abortion access.

This research project has the following aims:
1) To explore how governmental regimes and non-legislative barriers prohibit safe, legal abortions in Latin America.
2) To understand how pregnant women and activists devise strategies, form networks, and resist these barriers to seek
reproductive healthcare through travel and the transportation of abortion medication.
3) To highlight women's experiences of being forced to undertake travel in search of abortions and use their testimonies for
change.

Data description (abstract)

The right to access safe abortion is a highly divisive global issue. Laws prohibit abortion by request in the majority of the
world and countries such as the United States are implementing increasingly restrictive laws. It is therefore imperative that
we better understand why these restrictions exist, how they affect those in need of healthcare, and how they have been
contested. I examined these questions through the first study on abortion travel to focus on the Global South. While
almost all unsafe abortions and deaths from unsafe abortions occur in the Global South, scholarship on abortion travel has
overwhelmingly focused on the Global North (Sethna and Davis 2019). Through examining the barriers that prevent women
from accessing safe abortions and the strategies they devise to resist these barriers, I explored how women's bodies and
movement have been regulated by law and how this results in the mobility of women and abortion medication.

This research project had the following aims:
1) To explore how governmental regimes and non-legislative barriers prohibit safe, legal abortions in Latin America.
2) To understand how pregnant women and activists devise strategies, form networks, and resist these barriers to seek
reproductive healthcare through travel and the transportation of abortion medication.
3) To highlight women's experiences of being forced to undertake travel in search of abortions and use their testimonies for
change.

During this research I conducted interviews with activists and professionals with expertise on the topic of abortion in Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Venezuela. The results of this research have been published in a number of peer reviewed journal articles and I am currently writing a book on my findings. It has also resulted in a significant focus on engaged research projects and the non-academic outputs include a graphic novel about abortion in Mexico City, podcasts about abortion in Peru, and a global abortion database about abortion access.

The primary findings of the research are:
- the argument that states in Latin America are 'states of uncare' in relation to abortion
- that abortion care activists provide spaces of care where that is denied by the state
- the development of 'strategic ignorance' in abortion scholarship to better understand how abortion clandestinity is maintained
- the development of a 'chemical geography' of the abortion pill misoprostol
- a conceptual development of a 'geography of abortion'

Data creators: