Feminist medication abortion accompaniment 101

Feminist medication abortion accompaniment is a model of abortion care and a radical political activism movement that supports people in accessing safe abortion and exercising their reproductive autonomy regardless of the legal context. It is characterized by activist-driven, community-based strategies to facilitate use of de-medicalized approaches to widely available medications, following a shared understanding of safe abortion as not only evidence-based, but also a practice that is caring, autonomous, and free of violence, stigma, and judgment. The most recent evidence shows that self-managed medication abortion with the support of feminist abortion accompaniment is extremely safe and effective, no less so than in-clinic abortion care.

The overarching basis of the accompaniment approach involves trained accompaniers who provide World Health Organization-recommended medication abortion counseling and guidance, as well as compassionate emotional and physical support, throughout an individual’s self-managed medication abortion process. By uplifting five main strategies—feminist abortion accompaniment, political activism, intersectional feminism, strategic articulation, and abortion normalization—feminist medication abortion accompaniment seeks to affirm abortion as a valid and valued reproductive choice, in which people who have abortions are enabled as the protagonists of their own abortion process.