Abortion Mobilities: Travel and transport for reproductive rights across Latin America

Abortion is a routine and safe medical procedure when administered in the correct environment. However, all too often, the law and other barriers prevent women from accessing safe abortions where they are. Across Latin America such barriers are common and this means that travel is often the only way for women to access abortions.

While some have the option of travelling to a country or city where the procedure is legal, for others the only option is to find an illegal, unsafe abortion. There is also a growing trend of transporting abortion medication to women directly in order to prevent them from traveling themselves. Access is profoundly geographical with almost all unsafe abortions occurring in the Global South, and with a high proportion in Latin America.

In this research project I will be examining the experiences of Latin American women who are forced to travel across borders for abortion care or transport abortion medication due to barriers preventing them from receiving care close to home. It will be exploring the barriers that prevent women from receiving safe, legal abortions in three countries in Latin America (Mexico, Peru, and Guatemala) and the strategies they devise to resist these barriers to seek reproductive healthcare through travel.

The abortions women find on their travels may not be safe; women can face death, long-term health issues, or imprisonment as a result. But they often have no other option. The strategies to provide abortion access and to raise awareness include abortion hotlines, boats that sail women into international waters where they can escape the national law of their country, and activist networks that transport abortion medication.

These tactics help women to travel to find an abortion or deliver the abortion pills to them. I will conduct this research by undertaking fieldwork in Mexico, Peru, and Guatemala where I will interview reproductive health organisations and women who have travelled for abortions and analyse legal and policy documents to understand the 'official' barriers in place.

This research is important because I will be working alongside reproductive health organisations in Latin America and my findings will be used by them to inform their work on reproductive health. While the phenomenon of abortion travel has been studied in the Global North, it is significantly under-researched in the Global South, despite this being where the majority of unsafe abortion travel occurs.

I will therefore provide evidence of the phenomenon of abortion travel in Latin America, provide witness to the experiences of the women who are forced to travel for abortions, explore how the transportation of abortion medication works, and interrogate why and how barriers to safe abortion exist. This is for the clear purpose of working towards the removal of these barriers.

I will write for academic audiences but I will also be working with women and activists to write policy briefs about the phenomenon of abortion travel, make a short film about women's experiences of travel, and a graphic novella to raise awareness of abortion access in Latin America.