On the Embodied Experience of Anti-abortion Laws and Regulations: The Gendered Burden of ‘Abortion Work’

Abstract

This article explores how abortion laws and regulations are experienced by women and others who may become pregnant at the level of the affected body. It theorises that laws, policies, and regulations which criminalise or obstruct access to abortion shape the embodied subjectivities of gestating individuals in contextually specific ways. This research analyses the experiences of abortion activists in Ireland living under the 8th amendment – the constitutional abortion ban (1983–2018). It proposes the concept of ‘abortion work’ to exemplify the additional forms of reproductive labour imposed on women and people who have historically been forced to anticipate, plan for, and access clandestine abortions inside and outside of Irish borders. It explores how the experience of doing ‘abortion work’ changes the relationship of these individuals to their bodies, which they come to experience ‘out of space-and-time’ and as sites of both intense vulnerability and insurgent agency at the same time.