Abortion Beyond the Law Building a Global Feminist Movement for Self-Managed Abortion

How feminists across Latin America, Africa, and Europe are making self-managed abortion available to all–and the strong transnational feminist movement they have built along the way

While feminists in the Global North have been fighting to keep abortion legal, in countries across the Global South activists are working to bring self-managed medical abortion–abortion pills–to women, despite hostile governments, while also winning battles over legalization.

Drawing on years of research across Latin America, Africa, and the periphery countries of Europe, Abortion Beyond the Law describes the strategies, politics, and tactics of these direct action feminists who bring abortion pills, information, and support to people seeking to end unwanted pregnancies.

From the metro stations in Santiago, Chile, a common place to obtain misoprostol, to the legal strictures of Bolsonaro’s Brazil and the NGO-dominated landscape of Kenya and Nigeria, feminist activists are making safe, accessible abortion care available, despite the odds.

Even more, as sociologist Naomi Braine argues, they are building a robust transnational feminist network. As Braine shows, tactics developed in the Global South–hotlines, practices of accompaniment and peer-to-peer care, and scientific information–are now being shared with activists in Europe and North America, building a new model for international feminist solidarity.

Naomi Braine is a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, CUNY. Prior to joining the faculty at Brooklyn, she worked in the nonprofit research sector on issues of drug use and HIV and consulted for community-based organizations and the New York State Department of Health. Her political and intellectual work addresses gender, sexuality, reproductive justice, wars on drugs and terror, and health and collective action, from an intersectional perspective.