Criminalization of Women Accessing Abortion and Enforced Mobility within the European Union and the United Kingdom

Abstract

Abstract The article explores the impact of criminalization and restricted abortion access in Poland, Italy, and parts of the United Kingdom. We look at the ways in which the partial and extensive criminalization of abortion in the European Union and in the United Kingdom forces women to travel to access abortion care. At the core of our considerations is the interconnection of issues pertaining to criminalization and movement with citizenship, bodily integrity and autonomy, and the nation-state. By tracing these connections through an analysis of existing laws and scholarship, our concern here is to ask what discursive, narrative and theoretical resources feminist scholars might draw on and help co-produce in framing the interstices of criminalization of abortion and enforced mobility.