Suchergebnisse

New modes of neoliberal and rights-based reproductive governance are emerging across the world which either paradoxically foreclose access to universal health services or promote legislative reform without providing a continuum of services on the ground. These shifts present new opportunities for the expansion but also the limitation of abortion provision conceptually and 'on-the-ground', both in the Global North and South. The collection of papers in this special issue examine current abortion governance discourse and practice in historical, socio-political contexts to analyse the threat posed to women's sexual and reproductive health and rights globally. Focusing on abortion politics in the context of key intersectional themes of morality, law, religion and technology, the papers conceptually 're-situate' the analysis of abortion with reference to a changing global landscape where new modes of consumption, rapid flows of knowledge and information, increasingly routinised recourse to reproductive technologies and related forms of bio-sociality and solidarity amongst recipients and practitioners coalesce.

The World Health Organization considers the provision of information about safe, legal abortion essential for good-quality abortion care, but the question remains about who is responsible for providing information to people whose needs are not met in their own countries. Using data from a mixed-method research conducted with women travelling from France, Germany, Italy, and Ireland to seek abortion care in the UK, the Netherland, and Spain, we map the trajectories through which people receive information about accessing abortion abroad. We analyze the role of health professionals, activists, and online sources in people's accounts of information gathering. We argue that different formal approaches to information on national and international services distinctively affect women's experiences, and that transnational information flows occupy a crucial role in women's ability to travel. We also argue that managing information is an important aspect of how governments, practitioners or other actors navigate and exercise reproductive governance.