2SLGBTQIA+ experiences accessing abortion in Manitoba

Abstract

Abortion care is commonly accessed by 2SLGBTQIA+ people assigned female at birth, at rates comparable to cisgender and heterosexual women. However, existing research consistently demonstrates that abortion care systems remain rooted in cisheteronormativity, leading to the exclusion of 2SLGBTQIA+ people within abortion care settings. In Manitoba, abortion access is further shaped by geographic, social, and political constraints, producing uneven experiences of care across different identities, regions, and access to resources. This thesis draws on seven narrative interviews with 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals who accessed an abortion in Manitoba between 2020 and 2025. Guided by a queer reproductive justice approach and narrative analysis, the study centres participants’ stories as sites of knowledge production while critically interrogating the cisheteronormative logics embedded within abortion care systems. The findings demonstrate that while 2SLGBTQIA+ abortion-seekers encounter many of the barriers and facilitators to care documented in the existing abortion literature, these are frequently intensified and reconfigured through experiences of cisheteronormativity. Across narratives, cisheteronormativity shaped every stage of care, producing experiences of invisibility, discomfort, and marginalization. At the same time, participants articulated moments of affirmation and agency, sharing moments of inclusion or resistance to cisheteronormativity. Participants also offered visions for queering abortion care, calling for decolonial and sex-positive approaches, recognition of abortion within gender-affirming care frameworks, and expanded understandings of reproduction and family beyond cisheteronormative scripts. Ultimately, this study underscores the need to dismantle cisheteronormativity within abortion care, and understandings of reproduction more broadly, to support inclusive, affirming, and dignified abortion care for 2SLGBTQIA+ people in Manitoba.