Overview

Feminist legal scholars have shown that laws and trials are gendered, reflecting stereotypical ideas of gendered social roles (e.g., motherhood) [1-3]. The use of tests and forensic science in trials reinforces medical, social, and legal power by producing “evidence” of deviance or transgression. Testing and evidence are a public, disciplining response to moral panics on abortion and its self-management. Forensic science (biological, digital) is not solely material or a fixed entity, but is made through specific legal, social, and technological knowledges and practices [4-6]. Feminist Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars argue that science, evidence, and expertise are socially constructed, and that courts not only use knowledge but also produce what we know [7]. 

Since Nov 2022, over a 100 people have been investigated for unlawfully administering “any poison or other noxious thing” – i.e., taking abortion pills outside permitted use (e.g., without two doctors’ signatures). Police investigations have involved “digital strip searches” of suspects’ devices, and testing people for abortion drugs. Abortion providers and activists argue these investigations are not in the public interest and risk deterring care-seekers [8-10]

“Any Poison or Other Noxious Thing” aims to understand how abortion pills “testing” in Great Britain functions as a moralising and disciplining force, reinforcing abortion stigma, and acting as a mechanism for reproductive governance. An empirical study, it will take an interdisciplinary, multimethod approach to answer two interlinked questions: (i) How does “testing” for abortion pills (re)produce abortion-related discourses?, and (ii) How does “testing” for abortion (re)create “evidence” and “proof”? The project engages with critical and feminist approaches in reproduction studies, criminology, STS, law, and forensic science.