Contested spaces: abortion clinics, women's shelters and hospitals

Abstract

Contested spaces: abortion clinics, women's shelters and hospitals, by Lori A. Brown, Farnham, Ashgate, 2013, 254 pp., £55.00 (hardback), Lori Brown's book Contested Spaces is a highly original spatial approach to the topic of abortion. At the heart of the project is an attempt to remedy what Brown, an architect by profession, sees as the discipline of architecture's lack of political engagement. Brown's rethinking of abortion and abortion law draws on feminist theory and cultural geography to uncover the relationships of power that can be read in the built environment and other spaces related to abortion. This political approach references several different scales: the built environment of hospitals, clinics and their immediate vicinity, but also the way in which law operates at the scales of state and country. Although the main focus of the project is the USA, analysis of abortion law in Canada and Mexico is usefully offered by way of context.Brown's research is an avowedly feminist project and, as such, the book prioritizes the experience of women. This spatial -experiential analysis of abortion legislation arguably provides the volume's biggest contribution to existing geographical literature on abortion and women's healthcare. For instance, in Chapter 3, 'Legal frameworks understood spatially', Brown undertakes a micro-political analysis of the so-called bubble laws in the USA. A bubble law legislates a safe distance between protestors, facilities and patients. Three states in the USA currently employ zones of protection ranging from 8 to 35 feet around a person and the buildings they are entering. This zone of safety is used by Brown to examine how space is defined in abortion access. She finds that the bubble zone is easily compromised since the patient has no real way of invoking the law and, moreover, an exclusion zone of 8 feet can still allow protestors to successfully harass those entering and leaving clinics. The chapter convincingly establishes both through the text and innovative diagrams that the complex dynamics of the bubble are often outside the control of the law and fascinatingly, which the architecture sometimes aids one side over another.In contrast, another of Brown's case studies, in Chapter 4, 'Contested spaces', reveals the way in which the spatial politics of abortion law can work in favour of those seeking abortion. Brown shows that international waters can be used as a place of legal exception to provide abortions to women outside their own countries where the procedure is illegal. The Women on Waves non-profit organization is a mobile reproductive health unit on board a ship. Brown analyses how the ship's Dutch legal status and its docking 12 miles into international waters interrupts the spatial jurisdiction of a nation's abortion law. In the same chapter, Brown carefully excavates the spatial meanings of the tactics used by the 'Jane' organization in Chicago between 1969 and 1973 as a provider of safe yet illegal abortion procedures. Brown's explication of the importance of spac...

“Hair is your crown and glory” – Black women’s experiences of living with alopecia and the role of social support

“…The wave of the natural hair movement . The natural hair movement (NHM) can be positive and empowering to highlight the variance of hair within the Black community ( Moore, 2014 ; Ndichu & Upadhyaya, 2019 ). Some participants reflected on how the NHM has impacted their alopecia experiences such as having the opportunity to embrace and accept various hairstyles, no matter the length, style, or thickness, both with their natural hair but also using wigs and weaves.…”

“…Additionally, this study acknowledged the impact of the NHM in which Black women with alopecia can replicate wigs of similar textures/styles or choose to be bald ( Ndichu & Upadhyaya, 2019 ). With the participants emphasising the importance of hair linking to their culture the NHM can be beneficial to allow Black women to embrace their beauty with or without hair that may increase individuals’ self-esteem to cope and manage their alopecia ( Ellington, 2014 ; Moore, 2014 ).…”

“…The notion of concealment or having to camouflage one’s identity is a common theme within alopecia literature ( Dinh & Sinclair, 2007 ; Montgomery et al, 2017 ; Wiggins et al, 2014 ) and was present within this research, resulting in individuals feeling they are living a “double life”. The NHM can be beneficial to allow Black women to embrace their beauty with or without hair, which may increase individuals’ self-esteem to cope and manage their alopecia ( Ellington, 2014 ; Grey et al, 2013 ; Moore, 2014 ; Ndichu & Upadhyaya, 2019 ).…”

“…Historically, short/shaven hair was used to punish enslaved Black women to disregard their culture and reduce physical attraction ( Byrd & Tharps, 2014 ; Donahoo, 2019 ). Rooted in history, the significance of hair amongst the Black community has been instilled from birth and ingrained within the culture ( Moore, 2014 ; Okazawa-Rey et al, 1987 ) with individuals adopting different hairstyles, such as Afro’s, Cornrows, Locs, Bantu Knots, and Box-Braids ( Johnson, 2013 ; Mercer, 2000 ; Rodriguez, 2003 ). Also dating back to Madam C.J.…”

Intimate technologies: Towards a feminist perspective on geographies of technoscience

“…It is only recently that feminist geographers have started to engage with technologies of (assisted) reproduction (Coddington, 2021; Collard, 2018; England et al, 2018; Fannin, 2019; Schurr, 2017, 2018; Smith and Vasudevan, 2017; Sziarto, 2017), abortion (Calkin, 2021; Calkin and Freeman, 2019; Freeman, 2017; Moore, 2015; Side, 2016) and forms of ‘reproductive mobility’ (Schurr, 2019; Deomampo, 2013; Parry et al, 2015; Side, 2016). Further, feminist geography has studied the role apps play in surveilling and managing women’s reproductive lives as processes of menstruation (Shipp and Blasco, 2020) and pregnancy (Hamper and Nash, 2021), showing how intimate data are increasingly entangled with global flows of data.…”