The politicisation of abortion and its study by academics is a relatively new phenomenon. Arguably driven by legislative changes in the US and in Britain in the 1960s and ‘70s, feminist and gendered analysis of abortion and factors surrounding its enablement and restriction is becoming prolific and constitutes a field of study in itself. As we note particularly in Chapter Seven on reproductive justice, the study of abortion is bound into wider reproductive healthcare rights and restrictions, and also from a feminist intersectional perspective, identities beyond gender. The aim of this book has been to document and examine the variety of issues which feature in the politicisation of abortion, through the provision of a transnationally focused, interdisciplinary analysis of trends, illustrated using case studies from the Global North and South.

Within this book we very firmly position ourselves as feminist scholars from a range of disciplines (social policy, politics, medicine and women's studies), with a particular consciousness of abortion access as an issue of social justice. This is a strength of the analysis within the book. Our gaze is always firmly focused on outcomes for women in the society in which they live and the way that often abortion law and policy reflects wider gender inequalities within a particular society. As such, the study of abortion politics has much to tell us about power, gender inequality, attitudes towards women, healthcare provision, rights, the role of religion and conservative morality in lawmaking, both within particular societies and within emerging global trends.

There are a number of key points and arguments made within this book which are particularly important from a social justice perspective on abortion politics:

• • The criminalisation of abortion continues to perpetuate a stigma about it as being wrong or against nature, or only justifiable under certain restricted parameters. It is clear that laws criminalising abortion fail to serve the purpose of either protecting women or preventing abortion. Abortion must be taken out of the criminal law, as its inclusion there fulfils no necessary or proportionate function and serves only to perpetuate archaic and conservative notions towards women and their agency.