When the Abortion You Need is Illegal: Seeking and Obtaining a Third Trimester Abortion

• In Event: 4364 - Contextualizing Reproductive Trajectories

Abstract

In legal discourse, abortion has been constructed in the language of gestational age and the concept of “viability,” a framework built, in part, on medical knowledge, practices, and discourse. However, the reliance on gestation to describe a pregnancy is not how pregnant people themselves experience pregnancy nor does gestational age consistently inform how people experience abortion. Nonetheless, the tyranny of gestation has informed the regulatory environment of many US states: the majority have strict restrictions on abortion after the 24th week of pregnancy and, increasingly, states are imposing bans on abortions after 20 weeks post-fertilization. Yet these restrictions have not eliminated the need and desire of some pregnant people to obtain an abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy. So what are pregnant people’s experiences of seeking and obtaining an abortion when it is illegal in their home state? I draw on interviews with 28 women who were unable to obtain a wanted abortion in their home state because of restrictions on later abortion and who traveled out-of-state—and outside of their healthcare system—to obtain this care. Their accounts illustrate the obstacles they faced, including institutional, governmental, and regulatory barriers to abortion, as well as the work-arounds they deployed, typically under urgent time constraints. Respondents’ experiences point to the value of understanding do-it-yourself healthcare as a continuum, rather than as only a rejection of traditional healthcare systems.

Author

• Katrina E. Kimport, UC San Francisco