Abortion Travel and the Limits of Choice

Abortion mobilities

“…Scholars recognise that there is stigma associated with this enforced travel and that it operates as a hard barrier to access (Erdman, 2016; Pruitt & Vanegas, 2014; Statz & Pruitt, 2019). That women and pregnant people must travel long distances to access abortion care is a ‘private burden they must bear, not a public responsibility of the state’ (Kelly, 2016, p. 35). Kelly further explains that this ‘contribute[s] to a political economy [in the US] that privatizes abortion burdens, leaving poor, young, rural and overwhelmingly black and brown women to the vagaries of geography and the market’ (2016, p. 33).…”

“…That women and pregnant people must travel long distances to access abortion care is a ‘private burden they must bear, not a public responsibility of the state’ (Kelly, 2016, p. 35). Kelly further explains that this ‘contribute[s] to a political economy [in the US] that privatizes abortion burdens, leaving poor, young, rural and overwhelmingly black and brown women to the vagaries of geography and the market’ (2016, p. 33). The ’abortion‐free’ state works on the assumption that abortion can be accessed elsewhere—at once enforcing mobility for those who can travel and inflicting immobility on those who cannot, thereby disregarding the disproportionate impacts of abortion restrictions on marginalised groups.…”

“…Because these governments seek to be 'abortion-free' within their own jurisdictions, they willingly 'download the procedure onto other healthcare jurisdictions' (Sethna, 2019, p. 11). The outsourcing of abortion care (Kelly, 2016), such as in the case of Ireland to England (Ergas, 2016), requires freedom of movement and the right to travel-an 'exclusion/expulsion' that criminalises abortion, enforces mobility, and absolves states 'from the responsibility for the act of abortion' (Kelly & Tuszynski, 2016;Mecinska et al, 2020, p. 401). Scholars recognise that there is stigma associated with this enforced travel and that it operates as a hard barrier to access (Erdman, 2016;Pruitt & Vanegas, 2014;Statz & Pruitt, 2019).…”

“…Reproductive justice is at the heart of much of the current activism and scholarship on abortion, which seeks to situate the question of abortion access 'within a holistic analysis of people's lives that examines the political and historic circumstances in which those lives are situated' (Gomez, 2016, p. 52). Abortion geographers draw on reproductive justice to move discussions of abortion access beyond questions of its legality (Thomsen et al, 2022), and to question whether abortion travel can accurately be described as a 'choice' (Freeman, 2020;Kelly, 2016). Moreover, legal geographers have employed reproductive justice to consider abortion regulations and the 'more intricate and often "invisible" realities of gender, poverty, rurality, and immigration status, as well as the intersections among these' (Statz & Pruitt, 2019, p. 1107.…”

To recognize the tyranny of distance: A spatial reading of Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt

“…Although the burden of travel was a prominent concern prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade (Greenhouse and Siegel, 2012), U.S. feminist legal scholars and litigators have generally not identified distance, travel, or rurality as major issues in relation to abortion in the four decades since Roe . In the intervening years, pro-choice advocates have invested considerable energy and resources in actually getting women to abortion providers by funding for their travel (Kelley, 2016; National Network of Abortion Funds, 2017), but pro-choice litigators have dedicated little attention to explaining or illustrating for courts the burden of distance. In Casey , for example, the petitioners brief to the Supreme court made three mentions of “low-income, young, rural or battered women” (Petitioners Brief Planned Parenthood of SE Pennsylvania v Casey, 1992), but it did not, for example, detail the limits of public transportation in rural Pennsylvania nor discuss the price of bus tickets.…”