{
 "id": "circumvention-travel",
 "names": {
  "name": "Circumvention travel",
  "aliases": [
   "circumvention tourism",
   "circumvention medical tourism",
   "travel to evade a prohibition"
  ],
  "said": "The legal literature says circumvention tourism, after the paper that named it, and this site writes circumvention travel under its own rule. No other user of the second form was found for this record."
 },
 "etymology": {
  "root": "circumvent is mid-15c., \"surround by hostile stratagem\", from Latin circumventus, past participle of circumvenire, to get around, be around or encircle, from circum, around, plus venire, to come; the noun circumvention is early 15c., an act of outwitting. The word says the law was gone around rather than broken, and that distinction is the whole of the category.",
  "first_attested": "mid-15c. for the verb; 2012 for the legal category",
  "tier": "cited",
  "source": "s:etymonline-circumvent",
  "note": "I. Glenn Cohen wrote circumvention tourism and, in the same abstract, circumvention medical tourism. The form used on this site is this site's, imposed by its own banned-word rule, and is not offered as anyone else's usage."
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "Travelling to a country where a treatment is lawful in order to have it, because it is prohibited at home. The treatment is legal where it happens. Whether the traveller's own state reaches the conduct is a separate question, and mostly it does not.",
  "story": "I. Glenn Cohen named the category in the Cornell Law Review in 2012, at volume 97, pages 1309 to 1398. His own definition: travel \"for services that are legal in the patient's destination country but illegal in the patient's home country—that is, travel to circumvent domestic prohibitions on accessing certain medical services\". The four worked examples in that paper are female genital cutting, abortion, the use of reproductive technology, and assisted suicide. His 2014 book put the same problem inside a wider account of law and ethics, and the argument is still live: the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics ran an exchange on it in 2022 between Joshua Shaw and Jeremy Snyder.\n\n*Inference —* a category defined by a legal difference behaves unlike the rest of this subject. A price gap narrows when a currency moves; a prohibition does not. The traffic is steady, it points one way, and it stops the day the law at home changes — which is why these journeys cluster on borders rather than on airline routes.",
  "how": "Three questions decide what a journey of this kind exposes a traveller to, and each pair of countries answers them differently: whether the home state criminalises the act when its own nationals commit it abroad, whether a status created abroad — a parentage order, a certificate — is recognised at home, and whether a professional at home may lawfully provide the follow-up. None of the three is answered by the destination's law, which is the law the patient will have read.",
  "today": "As of 17 September 2026 the rule records on this site carry these questions country by country, each row naming one instrument and one date. This record names a category. It gives no legal advice and tells no reader what to do."
 },
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "reproductive-exile",
   "as": "The same journeys named from the traveller's side rather than the law's.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "surrogacy",
   "as": "The clearest case: lawful in one country, void or criminal in the next.",
   "rel": "procedure"
  },
  {
   "to": "abortion-travel-law",
   "as": "The rule record that maps this category across borders.",
   "rel": "rule"
  },
  {
   "to": "assisted-dying-law",
   "as": "Where the prohibition falls on whoever assists rather than on the patient.",
   "rel": "rule"
  },
  {
   "to": "pgt",
   "as": "A test that moves country when the permitted indications differ rather than when the price does.",
   "rel": "procedure"
  },
  {
   "to": "medical-tourism",
   "as": "The wider contested name, and the page where the argument over it is held.",
   "rel": "term"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:etymonline-circumvent",
  "s:cohen-circumvention-2012",
  "s:cohen-patients-with-passports-2014",
  "s:jlme-circumvention-2022"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  "fields": {
   "etymology": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "note": "no attested user of the -travel form was found; the note says so"
   },
   "text.how": {
    "tier": "inference"
   },
   "text.today": {
    "tier": "inference"
   }
  }
 },
 "confidence": "high",
 "schema": 1,
 "type": "term",
 "region": [
  "global"
 ],
 "updated": "2026-09-17",
 "facets": {
  "letter": "C"
 },
 "blurb": "Travelling to a country where a treatment is lawful in order to have it, because it is prohibited at home. The treatment is legal where it happens.",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "global",
   "name": "Everywhere",
   "note": "use for a node that belongs to no one country — a standard, a word, a risk"
  }
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "reproductive-exile",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "Reproductive exile",
   "as": "The same journeys named from the traveller's side rather than the law's.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "surrogacy",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Surrogacy",
   "as": "The clearest case: lawful in one country, void or criminal in the next.",
   "rel": "procedure"
  },
  {
   "to": "abortion-travel-law",
   "type": "rule",
   "name": "Travelling for a termination",
   "as": "The rule record that maps this category across borders.",
   "rel": "rule"
  },
  {
   "to": "assisted-dying-law",
   "type": "rule",
   "name": "Assisted dying, and who may cross a border for it",
   "as": "Where the prohibition falls on whoever assists rather than on the patient.",
   "rel": "rule"
  },
  {
   "to": "pgt",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Preimplantation genetic testing",
   "as": "A test that moves country when the permitted indications differ rather than when the price does.",
   "rel": "procedure"
  },
  {
   "to": "medical-tourism",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "Medical tourism",
   "as": "The wider contested name, and the page where the argument over it is held.",
   "rel": "term"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:etymonline-circumvent",
   "kind": "dictionary",
   "title": "circumvent (v.), circumvention (n.) — etymology",
   "publisher": "Online Etymology Dictionary, compiled by Douglas Harper",
   "url": "https://www.etymonline.com/word/circumvent",
   "accessed": "2026-09-17",
   "note": "mid-15c. and early 15c., from Latin circumvenire"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:cohen-circumvention-2012",
   "kind": "paper",
   "title": "Circumvention Tourism",
   "publisher": "Cornell Law Review 97(6):1309 (Cohen IG)",
   "url": "https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr/vol97/iss6/1",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:cohen-patients-with-passports-2014",
   "kind": "book",
   "title": "Patients with Passports: Medical Tourism, Law, and Ethics",
   "publisher": "Oxford University Press, 2014 (Cohen IG), ISBN 9780199975099",
   "url": "https://openlibrary.org/works/OL21085324W",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:jlme-circumvention-2022",
   "kind": "paper",
   "title": "The Flaw in Formalist Accounts of Circumvention Tourism, and Revisiting the Ethics of Circumvention Tourism",
   "publisher": "Shaw J, pp. 551-562; Snyder JC, pp. 563-565. Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2022;50(3)",
   "url": "https://doi.org/10.1017/jme.2022.93",
   "accessed": "2026-09-17",
   "note": "metadata confirmed through Crossref; the articles themselves were not read"
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  "text.story": {
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  "text.how": {
   "tier": "inference"
  },
  "text.today": {
   "tier": "inference"
  },
  "etymology": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": "no attested user of the -travel form was found; the note says so"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": null,
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "cuba",
   "type": "destination",
   "name": "Cuba",
   "as": "The word for travelling because a rule at home forbids it — here the rule points the other way, at entry rather than at treatment.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "georgia",
   "type": "destination",
   "name": "Georgia",
   "as": "The word for most of why anyone flies here.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "nicosia",
   "type": "hub",
   "name": "Nicosia",
   "as": "What a journey across a line like this one is usually called.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "warsaw",
   "type": "hub",
   "name": "Warsaw",
   "as": "The word for the outward half of this city's traffic.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "abortion-care",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Abortion",
   "as": "The name for crossing a border to do lawfully what home law forbids.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "assisted-dying",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Assisted dying",
   "as": "The word for crossing a border to do lawfully what cannot be done at home.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "egg-donation",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Egg donation",
   "as": "What this traffic is called when the reason for it is a prohibition at home.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "ivf",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "In vitro fertilisation",
   "as": "What the law-driven half of this traffic is called in the literature.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "pgt",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Preimplantation genetic testing",
   "as": "Why this test moves country when the permitted indications differ, rather than when the price does.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "sperm-donation",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Sperm donation",
   "as": "What the traffic is called where the reason to move is a prohibition on who may be treated.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "surrogacy",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Surrogacy",
   "as": "The name for crossing a border to do what home law forbids.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "vaginoplasty",
   "type": "procedure",
   "name": "Vaginoplasty",
   "as": "The word for crossing a border to obtain what home law or a home waiting list withholds.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "abortion-travel-law",
   "type": "rule",
   "name": "Travelling for a termination",
   "as": "The category this is the oldest example of.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "assisted-dying-law",
   "type": "rule",
   "name": "Assisted dying, and who may cross a border for it",
   "as": "The category this sits in.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "gender-affirming-care-access",
   "type": "rule",
   "name": "Access to gender-affirming care",
   "as": "The category this sits in.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "surrogacy-law",
   "type": "rule",
   "name": "Surrogacy law across borders",
   "as": "The wider category this sits in.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "medical-tourism",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "Medical tourism",
   "as": "The part of the traffic a prohibition at home explains, named separately in the legal literature.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "medical-visa",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "Medical visa",
   "as": "Why a visa that records the purpose of a journey matters where the treatment is lawful there and not at home.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "reproductive-exile",
   "type": "term",
   "name": "Reproductive exile",
   "as": "The same journeys named from the law's side rather than the patient's.",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "circumvention",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "Circumvention",
   "as": "The word, its root, and the paper that named the category in 2012.",
   "rel": "term"
  },
  {
   "from": "the-word-itself",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "The word itself",
   "as": "A name for a legal difference rather than for a motive.",
   "rel": "term"
  }
 ]
}