Framing a Feminist Abortion

AbortionWhy do we need a feminist abortion framework?T he right to bodily autonomy and reproductive control, not least through access to abortion, is pivotal to feminism and reproductive justice (Ross and Solinger 2017).Abortion seekers are not centered, however, when "access" is conceived primarily in terms of legal rights and the availability of services.Attention must also be drawn to the power structures through which abortion seekers and abortion-as a health service, a legal right, and a social and cultural practice-are located.We propose seven core principles for a "feminist abortion": supported, informed, safe, stigma-free, decriminalized, autonomous, and accessible (SISSDAA).In a context where feminist energies are (necessarily) concentrated in fights against abortion restrictions, these principles help us imagine a feminist vision (Walters 2024) in order "to provoke hope and create desire for a different future" (Alvarez et al. 2024, 12).Complex combinations of law, policy, and social norms produce high variability in abortion access globally (Marecek et al. 2017).As researchers located in the Global North, and cognizant of the necessary alliances between feminist protest and "antiracist, Indigenous, ecological, decolonial, and anticapitalist protest" (Alvarez et al. 2024, 12), our intention is not to be prescriptive.The World Health Organization (WHO 2022) provides an excellent road map for quality care.Sam Rowlands and Jeffrey Wale (2020) also offer a useful prompt for envisioning what abortion without regulatory constraints might entail.Like us, they concentrate on "person-centeredness as a major ingredient of a high-quality abortion experience," taking a ground-up constructivist view and "building from scratch and beginning with no abortion-specific laws at all" (Rowlands and Wale 2020, 238).Researchers have drawn on qualitative interviews with abortion patients to determine core facets of a good abortion