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