‘I’m Trusting You with My Entire Life’: Fractured Care, Impersonal Ties, and Abortion Pathways Post-Dobbs

• In Event: 50866 - Race, Families, and Reproductive Health (Co-sponsored by Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities)

Abstract

Since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) Supreme Court ruling, twenty-one states have introduced abortion restrictions or outright bans that reduce reproductive healthcare access. This has disproportionately impacted lower-income and racially marginalized women, who are both most likely to seek out abortions and face the greatest structural barriers to access. Despite the fracturing of the reproductive care landscape wrought by Dobbs, abortion rates have increased over the past two years mostly due to the wider availability (and looser regulations) on abortion medication. And yet, finding information and pathways toward care in the increasingly restrictive and surveillant reproductive healthcare landscape in the southern United States requires women tap into guerilla knowledge, shadow economies of care, and undisciplined technologies. Drawing on over 150 interviews with abortion seekers, helpers, and providers, we track two primary pathways through which women who live in states with abortion restrictions are accessing abortion care in the post-Dobbs US: by traveling out of state with support from abortion funds or by accessing medication abortion through illicit community networks. Because abortion is stigmatized and illegal (in certain regions), abortion-seekers avoid disclosing their plans to medical providers and strong kin relations. In this paper, we uncover the impersonal ties and underground knowledge women rely on to access abortion care, and the various means by which they decide who to trust in these increasingly risky times.

Authors

• Claire Laurier Decoteau, University of Illinois-Chicago

• Tirza Ochrach-Konradi, University of Illinois-Chicago