Abortion Accompaniment: Loving Resistance and Reproductive Citizenship in Mexico

Background and Purpose: Abortion advocates in Mexico, and across Latin America, have developed innovative strategies to circumvent legal restrictions to facilitate access to abortion care through a model known as acompañamiento (accompaniment). These accompaniment collectives first emerged as part of the larger feminist movement known as the marea verde, or green wave, which links access to reproductive rights to larger demands against state-sanctioned gender-based violence. In Mexico, the abortion accompaniment model arose over 20 years ago, led primarily by a feminist collective in Guanajuato. This work grew out of resistance to legislation that criminalized abortion under all circumstances, even in instances of sexual assault. This study explores how the model of abortion accompaniment practiced by feminist abortion advocates in Mexico reshapes our understanding of abortion service provision by extending a new form of reproductive citizenship to those marginalized by the state.

Methods: This research draws on 25 in-depth interviews with Mexican abortion advocates, supplemented by three months of participant observation. Interviews lasted on average 90 minutes. Participants ranged in age from 24 to 55. On average, participants had worked as acompañantes for 5 years, and ranged from 2 years to over 15 years. Almost all participants identified as cisgender, 50 percent identified as bisexual and 20 percent as lesbian. 25 percent were mothers, having between 1 and 4 children, and half (50%) had experienced their own abortion. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, translated into English, and analyzed using a flexible coding approach.

Findings: This study highlights the ways in which the model of abortion accompaniment extends access to reproductive citizenship for women and pregnant people in Mexico. This study highlights four overarching themes: 1)Bridge to rights; 2) Dignified care; 3) Body autonomy, autonomous bodies; and 4) Love as an act of resistance. In response to state harm, the advocates developed a model of abortion care that could exist outside of restrictive laws and policies. The advocates highlighted key differences between their model of care and public abortion services, including how they bridge access to rights and provide dignified care, free from violence and stigma, centered on bodily autonomy, and anchored in love. By offering this sort of care, the advocates engaged an insurgent reproductive citizenship, refiguring women’s citizenship rights beyond the state.

Conclusions and Implications: Through their model of abortion accompaniment, the abortion advocates extend access to abortion rights—and therefore, reproductive citizenship—to women and pregnant people who have been marginalized by the state. Additionally, this study seeks to disrupt epistemological understandings of reproductive care, including abortion service provision. This study suggests we pay particular attention to the ways in which abortion advocates shape and redefine care in legally-restricted settings, in order to develop a broader understanding of abortion service provision. In doing so, the findings of this study may inform new visions of reproductive justice.