Available From UC Press

An unprecedented, up-close look into the global self-managed abortion movement.
 
Abortion pills have made safe medication abortion possible for millions of people around the world, even in the most restrictive circumstances. In this timely book, Sydney Calkin illustrates the profound, transformative promise of these pills—which are safe, effective, and responsible for a sharp decline in maternal mortality. Abortion Pills Go Global demonstrates that the widespread practice of self-managed medication abortion makes it more difficult for countries to enforce oppressive abortion laws and less willing to do so.
 
Taking a bold and unique geographic approach, this book follows these pills as they are manufactured and transported by feminist activists from India to Ireland, Northern Ireland, Poland, and the United States. Calkin shows that the growing availability of abortion pills in places with restrictive laws means more people have access to self-managed healthcare. Abortion Pills Go Global looks ahead to see how the broader politics of abortion could shift in response to this global movement—one that looks not to laws for protection but to on-the-ground feminist mobilizations across borders.

Sydney Calkin is Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography at Queen Mary University of London and coeditor of After Repeal: Re-thinking Abortion Politics.

"Abortion has always been a part of the human story, but until recent decades, those who chose it often risked their lives in the effort to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Sydney Calkin’s masterful accounting of the revolutionary impact of abortion medications is part history, part investigative reporting, and part forecasting. It is a must-read for anyone hoping to understand what is happening behind the scenes of the abortion war unfolding around the world today."—Michelle Oberman, author of Her Body, Our Laws: On the Front Lines of the Abortion War from El Salvador to Oklahoma

"Sydney Calkin takes the question of women’s access to abortion as a jumping-off point for a searing account of the mutual entanglement of the moral and political economies of abortion pills. She offers a compelling and fresh take on a debate that has long been dominated by questions of the precise legal status of abortion. By following the practical strategies of access-to-abortion activists, Calkin retrains our sights: away from a tight focus on abstract legal regimes and onto people doing things. Phone calls and post offices pepper her tale of emancipatory tactics of our current moment’s most important feminist fight-back."—Sarah Hodges, Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, King’s College London

"Abortion Pills Go Global is an enlightening examination of how medication abortion has become the go-to option around the world. As Calkin shows so well, abortion pills have become a key facet of reproductive justice."—Rickie Solinger, coauthor of Reproductive Justice: An Introduction

“Abortion Pills Go Global couldn’t be more timely. An important contribution to the geographies of abortion and abortion technology that speaks to how activist practice responds to—and shapes—the legal and regulatory landscapes for reproductive care. If you want to know more about how abortion technology is mobilized within and across national boundaries and how abortion services could better reach those who need them, read this book!”—Maria Fannin, Professor of Human Geography, University of Bristol

“Abortion Pills Go Global is excellent, incisive, exacting, and critical. Calkin’s work is always of outstanding quality, and this is no different. The book offers exciting case studies that are intellectually rich and empirically grounded, offering academics and activists regional insights as well as conceptual engagements.”—Kath Browne, Professor of Human Geography, University College Dublin

"I cannot think of a more timely and important book in the world right now. Calkin’s Abortion Pills Go Global effectively situates medical abortion in wider reproductive justice and social decriminalization debates to tell us how abortion happens now and is changing the shape of the world we live in. It is not just a must-read for anyone interested in abortion, it is a must-read for anyone interested in geopolitics."—Sophie Harman, Professor of International Politics, Queen Mary University of London

“As well written as it is well researched, Calkin’s book is an incredibly thorough and nuanced study of the activist-driven provision of medical abortion pills in Europe and the United States. A must-read for anyone who is interested in knowing, fully and completely, what is happening on the ground.”—Mara Clarke, co-founder, Supporting Abortions For Everyone (S.A.F.E.)