Between Criminalization and Care as Organized Resistance

Abstract

Based on my personal experience with abortion and accompaniment, my objective is to reflect on the transformative power of care among women. Methodologically, I employed an ethnographic approach, combining retrospective and prospective with participant, activist, situated, and affective observations of my experience. This approach allowed for deep immersion in the phenomenon and recognition of myself as an integral part of the process. I argue that Mexico’s legal and social criminalization of abortion has fostered emotional communities of care through accompaniment. This has generated a theoretical, political, and ethical stance on reproductive justice that is neither for nor against women and pregnant individuals. Key findings reveal different epistemologies of accompaniment, accompaniment rooted in an ethics of care mobilized by emotions, and significant transformations in abortion narratives. This critical essay has two objectives. First, it proposes alternative ways of investigating feminist activism by validating the researcher’s emotions as a means of understanding phenomena that extend beyond discourse and are situational. Second, it contributes to the visibility of diverse epistemologies of accompaniment developed by women themselves.