Towards a critical geography of abortion at home: Conceptualising the changing spatialities of reproductive care

Amid growing polarisation and transformative events like the COVID-19 pandemic, abortion landscapes worldwide are undergoing a rapid change. This article examines the recent rise of abortion at home as a legal, medication-based method for ending early pregnancies outside clinical settings. Despite its increasing significance, little attention has been paid to the implications of home becoming a legally sanctioned space for abortion care. I address this gap by developing a conceptual framework for a critical geography of abortion at home – one that draws on abortion geographies, critical geographies of home, and embodied geographies to highlight the entangled power relations that emerge at the intersection of reproductive and domestic hierarchies. Not only does this approach shed light on the transformative role of home in shaping how abortion is understood, practised, and experienced; it also reveals how demedicalised abortion practices can, in turn, reconfigure meanings, practices, and experiences of home in the context of reproductive care. The paper argues that recognising the entanglement of abortion and home through an embodied approach is vital in making abortion at home a truly inclusive practice for all those who wish to make use of it.