The World Health Organisation (2022) states that universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, including abortion, ‘is central to both individual and community health, as well as the realization of human rights.’ International human rights bodies such as the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women therefore recommend that governments decriminalise abortion and provide safe, timely, and legal access to services. The legalisation and provision of safe, evidence-based abortion services is important not only for avoiding unsafe abortion-related mortality, but for substantive, intersectional gender equality and the protection of many other rights.

However, there are significant global disparities in access to abortion within these medico-legal frameworks due to legal, political, economic, historical, social, cultural, and medical factors. In many of these contexts, grassroots networks facilitate travel for legal abortions or self-managed abortion through the provision of abortion pills and information on their safe us. Pizzarossa and Nandagiri (2021) have highlighted the ‘constellation of actors’ involved in self-managed abortion, such as hotlines, feminist networks, accompaniment groups, doulas, pharmacists, or other community health workers. Some scholars have argued that self-managed abortion is not merely necessary to work around restrictive abortion regimes, but that this transgressive and feminist form of abortion care offers a preferable alternative to the medico-legal system (Yanow, Pizzarossa, and Jelinska 2021; Assis and Erdman 2021).

This has led to calls for the de-prioritisation of legal frameworks and the de-medicalisation of abortion, but in contexts where the harmful effects of restrictive abortion policies are felt in terms of maternal mortality and healthcare inequalities (see Suh 2021), the provision of abortion through health services remains a priority. This edited collection aims to grapple with these tensions and amplify voices that explore the profound global and intersectional inequalities in access to abortion.

I invite proposals for chapters to be included in an edited collection exploring these issues from interdisciplinary perspective, including theoretical or empirical work from any relevant discipline. I particularly encourage submissions from scholars working on abortion access within the Global South(s).

Proposals may be on the following themes (thought this is not an exhaustive list):

• Self-managed abortion networks, activism, or practices;
• International guidelines on abortion care provision;
• Abortion funds (and other networks aiding legal abortion);
• Abortion doulas;
• Telemedical abortion;
• Abortion experiences within or outside of healthcare facilities;
• Reproductive Justice perspectives on the above;
• Politics, policies, and reproductive governance;
• Reproductive/obstetric violence in the abortion context;
• Law and the criminal regulation of (self-managed) abortion;
• Human rights perspectives or practices;
• Access to post-abortion care;
• Access to later (second and third trimester) abortions;
• Healthcare provider training/education on abortion;
• De-medicalisation.
• Reflections on any of the above from specific country or regional contexts, particularly within the Global South(s).

In addition to traditional academic formats, proposals for creative pieces are also welcome – such as artwork, photography, personal reflections, brief commentaries, and short fiction.

Submission Guidelines:

• Academic Chapters: send a provisional title, abstract (max. 300 words), and biography (max. 150 words) to Z.Tongue@leeds.ac.uk by 1 September 2025.
• Creative Pieces: send a pitch (max. 300 words) or a description/example of your visual work, and a biography (max. 150 words) Z.Tongue@leeds.ac.uk by 1 September 2025.
• Responses by 1 November 2025.
• If your proposal is accepted, manuscripts (maximum 6000 words) and creative pieces will be due in Spring 2026.