“I'm Not That Type of Person”: Managing the Stigma of Having an Abortion

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 2011).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kate Cockrill

KATE COCKRILL is a public health researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research focuses on reproductive stigma, stigma measurement, and culture change. Her work on abortion stigma has appeared in such journals as Perspectives in Sexual Reproductive Health. She is currently guest editor of a special issue of Stigma Research and Action focusing on abortion stigma.

Adina Nack

ADINA NACK is a Professor of Sociology at California Lutheran University and a Senior Research Fellow for the Council on Contemporary Families. She is a medical sociologist whose research has focused on sexuality, social psychology, social inequality, and gender. Her research on stigmatizing sexual and reproductive health conditions has appeared in journals such as Symbolic Interaction, and her book on women living with incurable sexually transmitted diseases was published by Temple University Press.