Abolitionist Reimaginings of Health

In 2020, the authors of this article published "Abolition Medicine" as one contribution to international abolitionist conversations responding to widespread anti-Black police violence and inequity laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past year, there has been a surge of efforts to abolish deeply embedded patterns of race-based oppression in policing and incarceration in the United States. In this essay, the authors continue to explore how health care can join these conversations and move toward a praxis of health justice. Using the framework of Ruth Wilson Gilmore's organized abandonment, the article revisits grassroots organizations and efforts that have been engaging in abolitionist health care all along. It also looks to current and emerging abolitionist policies and practices operating at the margins of status quo health care for models of abolition in medicine.