Dr. A.J. Lowik is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Gender and Sexual Health Equity. They are currently recruiting participants for their study, “Safe, Legal… and Inclusive?” If you are a trans person aged 14+ and you have accessed, or tried to access, abortion care in Canada, they’d love to hear from you! This includes procedural/surgical abortion, medication abortion and self-managed abortion – abortion without clinical supervision. Participation would be in two phases. In phase 1, you’d sit down with A.J. for a 2-hour, virtual meeting to answer some survey and interview questions based on your experiences. In phase 2, you’d create art (poetry, painting, photography, dance, music, a drag performance, you name it!) based on your experiences with the help of some guiding questions, and then have a final virtual interview with A.J. to share and talk about your artistic creations. Get in touch at [email protected] or through the study’s Instagram (@transabortionresearch) if you have any questions or want to get involved.
Almost all abortion research focuses on cisgender women’s experiences. What little is known about trans people’s abortion experiences is the result of a few USA-based studies. At present, no Canadian trans abortion data exists despite unique delivery and access challenges within this context. This study uses mixed-methods and arts-based methods to address three aims: 1) expanding knowledge on trans people’s experiences access abortion in Canada, 2) providing trans people with an opportunity to share their abortion stories in survey, interview and artistic ways, and 3) documenting the factors that trans people describe as facilitating a ‘gender-affirming’ abortion care experience, with the goal of creating practice recommendations for abortion providers based on the experience of participants.