Queering abortion rights: notes from Argentina

Abortion stigma, abortion exceptionalism, and medical curricula

ABSTRACTWhile it is well established that medical student learning about abortion is inadequate and lacks systemisation, there is little research on why this might be the case. This exploratory study draws on a survey sent to 438 medical educators at Australia's 21 accredited medical schools through March-May 2021. Forty-eight educators responded to the survey. In this article, I examine their responses alongside policy and research on medical education to consider how curricula are determined. I conceptualise abortion exceptionalism - the singling out of abortion from other areas of medicine on the grounds that it is special, different, or more complex or risky than is empirically justified - as a mode of 'stigma-in-action', arguing that medical curricula are powerful sites for its reproduction and undoing.

Abortion rights in the crosshairs: a transnational perspective on resistance strategies

Soon after the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision asserting a constitutional right to abortion, activists in Argentina organized a protest in front of the U.S. embassy. The demonstration conveyed the need for a transnational defense of reproductive rights, particularly in light of the outsized role of the U.S. in global politics. The June 24, 2022 decision that voided Roe v. Wade (Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization) raises grave concerns about resurgent forms of authoritarianism even in democracies. Activists in Argentina have paid attention to these developments and have been ready to defend the relatively recent legalization of abortion in the country. In fact, Argentina presents an interesting example of a country that has been moving in a different direction than the United States. This experience can provide important insights about resistance strategies in contexts of abortion rights restriction.

"We can conceive another history": Trans activism around abortion rights in Argentina

Background: A growing body of work focuses on transgender reproductive justice. However, little research has been undertaken on trans activists' contributions to reproductive justice movements in general, or to abortion rights movements in particular. Countries where trans identities are depathologized, such as Argentina, provide a unique opportunity to study challenges, achievements, and demands around reproductive justice for trans individuals in contexts where reproductive trans bodies are enabled to exist and may obtain legal gender recognition. Aims: To explore critical interventions by trans and travesti activists and organizations in Argentina around the issue of abortion rights. Methods: This paper analyses public speeches, publications, artwork, and flyers by trans and travesti activists and organizations in Argentina. Results: Trans contributions to abortion rights struggles have established common ground between trans and feminist/women's movements around reproductive justice, have negotiated the inclusion of trans masculine persons within the abortion rights movement (both as activists and as potential users of abortion services), and have pointed to the country's depathologized Gender Identity Law as a potential model for abortion regulations. Discussion: This paper concludes by discussing trans and travesti activists' contributions to framing abortion rights within a wider social and political agenda at the intersection between health, gender, sexuality, and bodily autonomy, which furthers the work done by reproductive justice perspectives.

Abortion at the edges: Politics, practices, performances

This article provides a brief overview of the state of discourse, politics and provision of abortion in the Anglophone West, including developments in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It then surveys three promising directions for feminist abortion scholarship. The first is work inspired by the Reproductive Justice Movement, that points to the intersectional axes of inequality that shape abortion discourse and position us in relation to reproductive choice and access issues. The second is work that examines the particularity of the constitution of the aborting body, reflecting the particularity of the pregnant body. This is a specific body, with a specific history; abortion discourse draws from and makes a significant contribution to the meaning and lived experience of this body. The third area of scholarship we highlight is that which seeks to amplify the meaning of abortion as a social good. Much abortion scholarship is attuned to a critique of negative aspects of abortion-from its representation in popular culture to restrictive law and access issues. This is critical work but/and the performative nature of abortion scholarship, like all discourse, means that it can amplify the association of negativity with abortion. The article concludes by introducing the articles contained in the special section of Women's Studies International Forum, 'Abortion at the edges: Politics, practices, performances'.