Not Knowing or Not Wanting to Know? Abortion, Ignorance, and Resistance by Health and Social Care Professionals and Activists in Malta

Abstract

Lack of information and knowledge about abortion is an important barrier to access, yet abortion ignorance needs further conceptualization as an epistemic injustice. This article draws on feminist philosophical work on taxonomies of ignorance, including Nancy Tuana’s framework on epistemologies of ignorance, to provide a thicker understanding of the ways in which knowledge and information about abortion are regulated. Our article uses evidence from a study on the provision of abortion-related care in Malta, a country with the most restrictive laws on abortion in the European Union. Utilizing in-depth interviews with health and social care professionals, we center them as both gatekeepers to abortion knowledge and as ignorant about abortion in a variety of ways. We find that the restriction of knowledge about abortion serves differing ideological functions. Finally, we illustrate the role that abortion rights activists can play in providing specific forms of resistance in differing circumstances of abortion ignorance.