COMMENTARY ACCESS TO ABORTION FOR UNDOCUMENTED PERSONS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC FRÉDÉRIQUE CHABOT * Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights (‘Action Canada’) is a national organisation committed to advancing and upholding sexual and reproductive health and rights in Canada and globally. Building on the 50-year legacy of the organisations that formed Action Canada, we work to promote health, equity, wellbeing and rights related to sexuality and reproductive health to advance progressive policies on access to abortion, stigma-free healthcare, gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights and inclusive sex-ed, among other issues that intersect with bodily autonomy, gender, sexuality and reproduction. In March 2020, as the world quickly pivoted towards a pandemic response, Action Canada connected with partners across the country to monitor shifting needs and how providers of sexual and reproductive health services were adapting to this novel situation in Canada. We saw some concerning gaps in services leading to a disproportionate impact on stateless and undocumented persons. 1 Action Canada’s activities include the operation of a 24-hour toll-free pregnancy information and referral service — the Access Line — paired with a national abortion fund to ensure those who face barriers can access abortion care. Calls to the Access Line more than doubled in the first months of 2020. Callers were looking for ways to access safe abortions during the pandemic. Conference calls with our network of sexual health centres across the country, surveys to partners and a variety of national organisations revealed concerning trends in relation to stateless persons and those with precarious immigration status and their ability to access sexual and reproductive health care. Action Canada, working with the National Abortion Federation (‘NAF Canada’), observed that access to abortion in some regions decreased, even though health officials from every province and territory declared abortion an essential service. While many hospital-based programs continued at their usual volume and clinics did their best to maintain services at the same level, many successfully, some decisions made by hospitals about who could access their services, paired with increased travel challenges, resulted in restricted access. Providers and * 1 Frédérique Chabot (she/her) is the Director of the Health Promotion Team at Action Canada, managing, among other programs and activities, the Access Line, a hotline where the Canadian public can access sexual and reproductive health information, support and referrals for services. Before joining Action Canada, Chabot worked in the community health sector as the Women HIV/AIDS prevention coordinator at the AIDS Committee of Ottawa. She was also a board member of POWER, a sex worker right organization, from 2008 to 2018. Because Action Canada’s national abortion fund aims to be as low-barrier as possible, we do not ask for a person’s immigration or citizenship status or gather much demographic data that would make it possible to segregate stateless people from people who have precarious immigration status. We work with whoever is uninsured and face specifically related health care barriers.