Ruth Fletcher
Speeches:
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Travelling for Abortion:
A Framework for Future
Advocacy and Research This presentation will discuss the ways in which
the Irish Crisis Pregnancy Programme (formerly
the Crisis Pregnancy Agency) has developed
public governance of cross-border abortion
care. In doing so my aim is to think more about
the limits and potential of abortion travelling
as an option for women living with restrictive
abortion regimes. The governance of abortion
travelling does seem to have the negative effect
of consolidating the non-development of local
lawful abortion services. But the Programme
has also had the effect of providing publicly
subsidised support for women who travel,
enabling the reporting of extra-territorial abortion
rates as national abortion rates, and of promotingabortion after-care on return. These public health
measures, limited as they are, provide evidence
of some public support for abortion use and may
provide future resources for tackling domestic
resistance to abortion provision.
In analysing the Crisis Pregnancy Agency’s
administration of an outward flow for abortion care,
I identify its 4 key technologies of governance as
the non-development of local abortion services,
provision of support for exit, reporting of extra-
territorial abortion rates, and promotion of aftercare
on return. These technologies illustrate how state
agencies may actively mobilise ‘the peripheral’
as they claim to address local needs through
participation in the regulation of cross-border
healthcare. In so doing they configure a conception
of the peripheral that does not want to become
core and participates in transnational networks on
its own terms. Secondly, this peripheralism is not
constituted by the core, but cultivates dependency
on core provision of healthcare in other
jurisdictions. Thirdly, this peripheralism comes into
being by focusing on marginal healthcare services
(information, counselling, check-ups) on the fringes
of abortion provision.