Abortion exile: navigating Mexico’s fractured abortion landscape

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.