Not knowing or not wanting to know? Ignorance, abortion and resistance

Lack of information about abortion is highlighted as a barrier to access, yet restriction of information is often not conceptualised as an injustice in itself. This paper utilizes Nancy Tuana’s conceptualisation of epistemologies of ignorance to provide a framework for understanding the ways in which information about abortion is regulated. Our paper uses evidence from a study on the provision of abortion care in Malta, which has the most restrictive laws in Europe, and centres healthcare professionals as gatekeepers to abortion knowledge. We find that the restriction of knowledge about abortion serves differing ideological functions in differing circumstances which must be understood as injustices in order provide specific forms of resistance to abortion ignorance.