International spaces for feminist cross-border resistance

Abstract

This article documents the struggle of pro-choice nongovernmental organizations, Women on Web, Women on Waves, and Aid Access, to provide reproductive healthcare information and procedures, including medical abortion, to people around the world seeking to exercise their human rights to physical health and autonomy irrespective of state legal structures. These organizations seek to affirm and share factual reproductive health knowledge and care approved by the World Health Organization including safe and approved medical abortions. Women on Waves and Women on Web use international waters and the Internet as common spaces to exercise freedom over bodily autonomy. Specifically, Women on Web and Aid Access use the Internet as a digital imaginary extension of physical international spaces. The authors argue that a transparent and open Internet, as an imagined common, is essential to countering ongoing processes of privatization of international spaces and restrictions on reproductive health rights. Under this framework, the status of abortion care websites to remain accessible and avoid censorship is a bellwether for both net neutrality and feminist geopolitics. The struggle for an open Internet has broad implications for reproductive health, bodily autonomy, and the free exchange of ideas.