ABSTRACT
In thinking about care as a practice that cycles and connects, this chapter focuses on the negotiation of strangeness as an aspect of care. The abortion care practices of feminist volunteers provide a rich site in which to consider whether and how care may be revalued. As they reach out to those who have been displaced in their search for abortion, activists mobilise an ethic of care in constituting relations with strangers, filling a gap in healthcare, and providing non-judgemental support. Their practice of opening up their homes to travelling abortion-seekers draws on techniques of social reproduction as they deploy material and affective resources in reproducing feminist community. Volunteers also face up to the asymmetry of care as they move between acknowledging the burdensomeness of abortion travel, and discovering how strangeness opens up the potential for connection over critique, dialogue and challenge. For all these reasons, abortion support groups provide a fruitful site of inquiry for thinking through the revaluing of care activities. The specificities of their feminist voluntary practices, as they recognise and rework the significance of being and feeling strange on the abortion trail, make them a rich intellectual resource for theorising cycles and connections of care.
