Ethics of Care Born in Intersectional Praxis: A Feminist Abortion Accompaniment Model

Abstract

Abortion in the global South is highly restricted. The social, economic, and health problems engendered by this restriction are often relegated to the discipline of public health and considered a technical problem to be solved through policy change, international pressure, and Northern aid. In recent years, however, local activists around the world have responded to legal restrictions by counseling and supporting abortion seekers online, by phone, and in person in self-managing their own abortions. In Latin America, this direct-action tactic, known as abortion accompaniment, is led largely by self-identified feminist collectives. In this article, we examine the feminist orientation of abortion accompaniment, considering how the model engages with a feminist ethic of care, reflexivity, and intersectionality—and to what effect. Drawing on in-depth interviews with abortion accompaniers in Argentina, Chile, and Ecuador, we show that abortion accompaniment cannot be understood as merely a response to legal restrictions. Rather, accompaniment is activism rooted in a feminist approach. The model of abortion care implemented by accompaniment groups includes direct action, justice, and listening. We argue that abortion accompaniment is a unique and innovative feminist praxis that is shaped by both previous feminist intellectual commitments and feminist emotional connections forged through the abortion process, resulting in a reflexive feminist theoretical model that centers care and exists fully outside the state and the formal health care system.