Abstract
Drawing on interviews with U.S. women, this article offers a social–psychological framework for understanding the stigma of having an abortion and identifies the individual stigma management strategies women use to mitigate negative intrapersonal and interpersonal consequences of abortion stigma. We also contribute to contemporary understandings of abortion stigma by theorizing how aspects of abortion stigma—such as its concealability and episodic expression—interfere with women's potential to collectively manage or dismantle abortion stigma. Finally, we discuss how our conceptual framework can be used to inform the development of a measure of the stigma experiences of women who have had an abortion, which can help improve health and well-being outcomes for women.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Ford Foundation. We also acknowledge the work of our co-investigators: Tracy Weitz, Katrina Kimport, Deb Karasek, and Kira Foster and our research assistants Michaela Ferrari and Poonam Pai.
Notes
1Hereafter we will use the word “women” to refer to women and girls together.
2Abortion is slightly less common than Melinda thinks: half of American women will experience an unintended pregnancy by age 45, 10% will have an abortion by age 20, 25% by age 30, and 30% by age 45 (see Jones and Kavanaugh Citation2011).