CfP: Abortion across Borders: the case of the United Kingdom and North America
Issue 55 of the ILCEA journal will be devoted to the
exploration of the links between sub-state borders and the right to abortion in
two English-speaking areas – the United Kingdom and North America – which are
characterized by decentralized governance systems: federal for Canada and the
United States, devolved to national entities in the case of the UK.
On June 24, 2022, the fact that the United States Supreme
Court overturned Roe v. Wade did not only testify to the
precarious nature of abortion laws, but it also provided a tangible example of
the potential risks when their management is delegated to sub-state territorial
entities, whether federal or regional.
If the federal organization was originally designed to allow
each state to preserve its cultural specificities, rarely in American history
have these specificities reached such heights, resulting in “ideological
divisions” that are difficult to reconcile, especially when it comes to the
right to abortion. While in the 1960s and 1970s the Supreme Court enabled women
to make significant progress in terms of their rights through several landmark
decisions including Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which
protects the right to contraception, or Reed v. Reed (1971)
which makes discrimination on the basis of sex illegal due to the “equal
protection clause” of the 14th amendment to the Constitution, the June 2022
decision constitutes a major step back. Yet, even before the decision to
overturn Roe v. Wade, more than 20 states had already passed laws
attempting to restrict abortion. Texas or Mississippi, for instance, had
reduced the period during which a woman can have an abortion to a minimum in
2021 and 2018 respectively; six other states (North Dakota, South Dakota,
Kentucky, West Virginia, Missouri, and Mississippi) had also limited the number
of clinics authorized to perform abortions to one. The right to abortion had
therefore been in jeopardy for several years, particularly in states in the
South and the Midwest, under pressure from religious lobbies. Last June’s
decision was thus greeted as a victory for the more conservative states in the
US, which hastened to push these restrictions even further. In January 2023, 13
of them simply banned abortion. Conversely, other states have codified access
to abortion in their law in order to protect this right. This is for example
the case of Maryland, Vermont, New Jersey, Colorado, Washington State, or
California. This geographical and political polarization around the right to
abortion seems surprising insofar as 61% of Americans say they are in favor of
legalizing abortion.
Just like its neighbor to the south, Canada has not codified
the right to abortion by any law, but it is protected by a 1988 Supreme Court
decision (R v. Morgenthaler). However, in 1990, Brian Mulroney’s
Conservative government tabled a bill to criminalize abortion again. Even
though this proposal was rejected by the Senate, access to abortion today is
not the same everywhere in Canada. Since the country is also a federal system,
some provinces offer no abortion clinics (such is the case of Prince Edward
Island, for example) or very few (only three in New Brunswick). In 2020, during
the Conservative Party leadership race, the pro-life movement also benefited
from notable media coverage when a candidate – Leslyn Lewis – made the ban on
abortion her new hobbyhorse. In response to the American decision to invalidate
the right to abortion, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared himself
favorable towards adopting legal measures to “ensure” and “improve” access to
abortion. However, this position on the part of the federal leader is not
shared by all the Canadian provinces. In the West, only a minority of people
say they are in favor of codifying the right to abortion: 47% in Alberta and
42% in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Consequently, if the American Supreme Court’s decision has
repercussions on a continental scale by reviving the debate about the right to
abortion, it also generates new cross-border dynamics. Women are starting to
look to Canada for an abortion, while on the Mexican side, the Necessito
Abortar Mexico NGO now offers its services to American women who wish
to buy abortion pills.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the United Kingdom offers
an example of a system whose asymmetry can be perceived to varying degrees
depending on the region and the time period concerned. Indeed, although the UK
was one of the first European countries to allow abortion in 1967, historically
the legislation has never been unique to the UK as a whole. The Offences
Against the Person Act (OAPA), which made abortion a criminal offence, applied
only to England, Wales and Ireland, but excluded Scotland, where the issue
continued to be governed by the country's own Common law. Subsequently, the
1967 Abortion Act, which allowed abortion with the agreement of two doctors up
to 24 weeks of pregnancy, applied to England, Wales and Scotland, but excluded
Northern Ireland. Today, the legislation is still not uniform across the
country - even though, unlike the US, the UK is not a federal state but a
unitary one. Since its creation in 1921, and until recently, Northern Ireland
has had one of the most restrictive laws in Europe concerning the right to
abortion, even before the power was devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly
in 2010 (under the Hillsborough Castle Agreement). More than two years after it
was legalized (in October 2019), access to abortion in Northern Ireland remains
difficult. Finally, the asymmetry in terms of legislation has increased in
recent years, following the 2016 decision taken by Westminster to devolve the
issue of abortion to the Scottish Parliament, even though the issue had been
explicitly listed as a 'reserved' matter during the devolution process and in
the first Scotland Act 1998, due to its ethical nature. These national
differences, whether formal or informal, have given rise and continue to give
rise, albeit to a lesser extent, to internal medical tourism: from Northern
Ireland to England and Wales, but also, and it is less well known, from
Scotland to England.
While the question of the limits imposed on women's right to
abortion in many countries, as well as that of medical tourism between
countries, has been the subject of a number of studies in recent years, this
issue would like to focus on a topic that has not yet been explored, namely the
role played by sub-state borders in this process. In so doing, it aims at
contributing to a more global reflection on the direct and indirect effects of
federalism and devolution on gender equality policies.
In this context, contributions may address the following
issues
- Domestic and cross-border medical tourism related to abortion
- Legislative asymmetries through their history and functioning
- Regional/federal disparities
- Mechanisms/blockages...
- The instrumentalization of abortion in the context of power relationships
The intersection of different characteristics will be
preferred to a purely binary approach.
Proposals for contributions, written in French or English,
should be sent before 30 June 2023 to Veronique Molinari and Pierre Alexandre.
They should include a title, an abstract of no more than 300 words and a short
biographical note mentioning the author's institutional affiliation. Papers
should be submitted by 5 January 2024.
Contact Info:
Prof. Veronique Molinari, Université Grenoble Alpes