Abortion Accompaniment and Insurgent Reproductive Citizenship in Mexico

Despite recent Supreme Court rulings to decriminalize abortion at the federal level, abortion access in Mexico remains largely inaccessible. Within this restrictive abortion landscape, abortion activists—known as acompañantes—have developed innovative strategies to facilitate access to safe self-managed abortion. This article explores the ways in which reproductive citizenship in Mexico is both obstructed by state actors and reconfigured through the resistance of abortion activists. Drawing on 25 in-depth interviews with acompañantes, I demonstrate how abortion restrictions in Mexico constitute a form of gendered state violence, as well as how abortion activists resist this violence to facilitate abortion care beyond the state. In doing so, I argue that abortion activists engage in an insurgent reproductive citizenship for women and people with the capacity to become pregnant in Mexico by making accessible rights that have been denied by the state.