Self-Managed Abortion

Since the 1980s, people have used medication to terminate pregnancies outside formal healthcare settings, a strategy that emerged at the margins of Brazil’s health system and has since diffused globally through an expanding constellation of local and transnational actors. Self-managed abortion (SMA), as an effective and low-risk method, challenges conventional definitions of ‘safe’ abortion and regulatory frameworks. As an accessible and inexpensive healthcare intervention, it mitigates inequalities and advances sexual and reproductive rights. As a disruptive reproductive technology, SMA shifts power away from institutionalized medical systems and into the hands of pregnant people, reinforcing reproductive agency.

This British Academy-funded project critically examines the dynamic interplay between SMA and the law, framing SMA as both a transgressive and prefigurative practice. It explores how abortion laws shape SMA and, conversely, how SMA challenges and reshapes legal norms. Building on feminist legal scholarship, this work critiques traditional medico-legal paradigms and envisions a transformative understanding of abortion care that transcends existing legal structures. By positioning SMA as a site of legal and political contestation, the project seeks to redefine the boundaries of abortion law and policy, offering new directions for legal scholarship and advocacy. Ultimately, it argues that SMA is both a challenge to and a blueprint for reimagining reproductive justice in law.

About the speaker

Dr Lucía Berro Pizzarossa is a British Academy International Fellow at Birmingham Law School and an Affiliated researcher of the Global Health and Rights Project at The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School. Her project sits at the intersection of law, social movements and human rights and applies a socio-legal approach to explore how abortion law and regulation impact SMA practices; how SMA practices affect abortion law and regulation; how SMA practices have impacted international human rights law and global health governance.

The event is hybrid and we encourage people to attend in person. However, if you cannot attend in person, you can join online using this following link.