From choice to labour: Understanding ‘aborting labour’ in Irish at-home early medication abortion experiences

This article analyses the process of having an early medication abortion (EMA) in Ireland under the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 and addresses the experience of abortion seekers as aborting labourers. Drawing on literature from Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) with abductive analysis of empirical data following Charmaz's Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) methodology, I argue for a sociological understanding of abortion seekers as workers performing aborting labour with three interrelated facets: gestational, logistical, and hermeneutic. Based on secondary analysis of qualitative interviews with service users in the first large cohort study of abortion access post-Repeal, the Unplanned Pregnancy and Abortion Care Study , this article argues for a reappraisal of abortion seekers instead as gestational workers performing aborting labour in workplace conditions not of their choosing. Ireland's abortion policy relies primarily on EMA self-administered in the home for the provision of most abortion services. This has global relevance for understanding medication abortion provision in contexts where abortion is legal, but aborting labourers are not given a choice of method. I argue for a broader understanding of the structural inequalities aborting labourers face when engaging with neoliberal ‘choice-based’ abortion governance and the consequences these inequalities have on the production of new aborting subjectivities.