Commentary: Abortion Geographies: The Need for Proximal Spatial Analyses

As the importance of medication abortion increases under restrictive abortion laws in the United States, we anticipate a concurrent rise in scholarship on experiences of medication abortion and abortion-related travel (from areas with restrictive policies to areas with less restrictive policies). While much scholarship attends to distal (e.g., state-level) spatial dynamics in abortion, there is a pressing need to understand how intersectional inequalities, including dynamics of race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status, also shape access to desirable (e.g., comfortable, safe, private) proximal spaces for completing medication abortion, and how spatial access and experiences shape embodied and socioemotional outcomes following medication abortion (KFF, Citation2024). In this commentary, we call for researchers to center the understanding that systems of oppression shape abortion access at multiple levels, including through the influence of spatial dynamics not only at the state level but also, and critically, at the individual level and especially in proximal spaces such as private homes.