Consequences of
Abortion Stigma

There are many consequences to abortion stigma.

Abortion stigma is a “compound stigma”

Abortion stigma builds on and interacts with other modes of structural and institutional injustices and discrimination

At its core, abortion stigma and resulting poor care, loss of status, and discrimination violates women’s* most basic human rights, including the right to be free from gender-based discrimination, the right to privacy and the right to the highest attainable standard of health.

*Most abortion research and reproductive healthcare has focused on heterosexual cisgender women. The transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive population who are intersex, or were assigned female at birth, have abortions, experience pregnancies, and need as comprehensive sexual and reproductive healthcare (Moseson et al., 2020). Additionally, cisgender sexual minority women (non-heterosexual women) are often overlooked in abortion research (Moseson et al., 2020).

Abortion stigma serves to erase and disguise a legitimate medical procedure, discredit those who would provide or procure it and undermine those who advocate for its legality and accessibility

Physical / Medical Ramifications of Abortion Stigma:

Health and medical complications

Public shaming

Verbal, physical, and emotional abuse

Community exclusion

Mistreatment in the workplace or school setting

Denial of medical services or accurate medical information
Steep fees for services
Poor quality of services
Delay of care
Isolation
Forced to resort to self-induced abortion or unsafe avenues to get an abortion

Death
Suicide
Mistrust between physicians and patients
Economic and financial consequences
Due to abortion being underreported, misleading data may be used to createlaws and policies and impact funding

Mental / Emotional Ramifications of Abortion Stigma:

Can instill fear
Create psychological distress
Isolation
Low self-esteem
Pervasive secrecy
Unnecessary stress
Fear of disclosing about one’s abortion
Denial

Guilt
Forced into silence about one’s abortion experience due to discourse around abortion being deeply polarizing
Mental and emotional exhaustion due to the social process of navigating which spaces are safe

Loss of relationships with friends, family members, and romantic partners
Loss or absence of social support
Internalized beliefs of negative stereotypes and attitudes, leading to self-stigma
Shame

Abortion vs. Abortion Stigma

Abortion Myths

What is Abortion Stigma?

Consequences of Abortion Stigma

Beyond the Individual

What Can We Do?

Make it stand out.

The Ecological Model of Abortion is a framework helps us identify abortion stigma on all societal and systemic levels. This framework proves that abortion stigma is linked with other forms of oppression such as sexism, racism, and socioeconomic inequality, and intersects with both stereotyping and prejudice.

The first outermost level is Framing Discourses / Mass Media and Culture. This is the language that shapes public opinion and where certain strategies are disseminated which control the dominant discourse surrounding abortion, and how much visibility or invisibility abortion and abortion stigma are given in popular culture.

The 2nd level consists of macro societal structures, such as government, structural, and legal spheres. Many of the United States’ laws and policies, especially on the state level, bolster and support abortion stigma in society’s core structures. Abortion stigma and gender discrimination can be perpetuated and cemented in policy and law, and is pervasive on a global scale.

Organizational and institutional influences outside of government may also perpetuate and create abortion stigma through their structure, policies, and norms. This includes health facilities and medical education organizations. For example, abortion care is mostly segregated and seen as separate from other medical or reproductive care. Another example is in medical school: only less than 27% of OBGYN residency programs in the U.S. require first-trimester abortion training. Insurance companies also limit coverage of abortions.

Within smaller or localized communities, abortion stigma is related to status loss for the individual who seeks an abortion. This can be highly dangerous if an individual’s access to financial resources or mobility is limited with their community. This can lead to secrecy, sometimes pushing an individual to take extreme measures to attempt an abortion alone, sometimes ending in fatal consequences.

At the individual level, this is the individual’s personal experience of abortion stigma, including perceived, experienced, and internalized abortion stigma. This includes the relationships between deciding to disclose one’s abortion, or maintaining secrecy. WEIGHING AND DOING THE MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL GYMNASTICS on figuring our which spaces are safe.

There is perceived or felt abortion stigma, experienced or enacted abortion stigma, and internalized abortion stigma or self-stigma.

Perceived: read definition. This also includes what an individual think may happen to them if others found out about their abortion (Shellenberg et al., 2011).

Experienced: This can happen in multiple settings like in the home, community, healthcare settings like the doctor’s office, or in society at large.

Internalized: Internalized abortion stigma can lead to shame and secrecy by forcing individuals into being silenced. All aspects of abortion stigma is harmful but self-stigma can be truly insidious because an individual can take the negative stereotypes of “the type of person who gets an abortion” and accept them as true. This is usually done in silence and they carry the burden of stigma in silence, something that was not theirs in the first place.