Abortion stigma is rife around the world. The idea that abortion is ‘bad’ or ‘immoral’ underpins restrictive laws, fuels discrimination, and leads to harmful consequences. People are being prosecuted for providing or having abortions. Some are dying from lack of access. Women and others who seek abortions often face judgment, harassment, and even violence for their choices.
Abortion stigma is so widespread globally that it may seem ‘natural’. But that’s simply not the case. Abortion stigma has been constructed and propagated by certain groups of powerful people – often with ulterior motives that have little to do with pregnancy outcomes.
Abortion wasn’t always legally restricted or seen as an immoral act. The Catholic and Evangelical churches were not even always so strict in their opposition.
As we mark the Global Day of Action to Destigmatize Abortions let’s consider some of the reasons the choice to end an unplanned pregnancy has become such a contentious issue.
Abortion has always existed. And it wasn’t always illegal.
In nearly all countries around the world abortion is still punishable under the law, with some exceptions. However, abortion has been around a lot longer than the laws trying to ban it.
There is evidence of abortions taking place in ancient civilizations back in 1600 BC. In pre-colonial Africa, abortion was practiced in over 400 cultures for various social and economic reasons.
“The Malagasy people used it to limit the sizes of families. The Maasai people used it when women were impregnated by men who could not provide for the child. The Maasai and the Owambo people used it in cases of teenage pregnancy. The Efik people used it if they predicted birth defects.”
Early Western philosophy also acknowledged abortion. It was widely accepted that a fetus was not considered a separate entity until quickening – the point at which fetal movement could be felt, around 18-20 weeks of pregnancy. Until that stage, abortion was not ethically distinct from other medical procedures.
Laws attempting to ban abortions were imposed across the world by Colonialists.
By the end of the 19th century, abortion was legally restricted in nearly every country. These prohibitive laws came from European colonisers, and many remain in force today across formally colonized countries, while they have been liberalised in their countries of origin.
There’s no one simple answer as to why abortion became increasingly legislated against. A new book on the history of abortion notes that early shifts towards criminalisation may well have been a reaction to women’s increasing freedom:
“History is marked by periods in which abortion is accepted, and by harsh crackdowns that tend to be driven less by what abortion is than what it is seen to represent: a decline in sexual morality, and women rising too high above their station.”
Early arguments against abortion rarely focused on ‘fetal rights’ but occasionally invoked the notion of the fetus as male property:
“In 17th-century Caribbean colonies, where enslaved women used abortion as a form of resistance to avoid giving birth to a child destined to be enslaved, slave owners opposed abortion because it deprived them of future capital.”
Abortion restrictions also became entangled with white supremacy and eugenics. In the US, early abortion laws were deeply influenced by fears about racial demographics. Lawmakers and medical professionals promoted policies that enforced childbirth among “socially desirable” women while simultaneously enacting forced sterilizations of Black, poor, immigrant, and incarcerated women.
This history shows that abortion restrictions have always been about controlling whose reproductive decisions are respected, and whose are criminalised.
The anti-abortion movement continues to work hard to convince us that abortion is ‘wrong’.
Abortion is a very common medical procedure. We all know and love people who’ve had abortions. So, it takes a lot of effort (and money) to try to convince us that it should be illegal and shameful.
‘Crisis pregnancy centres’ set up by anti-abortion organisations have been exported across the world in an effort to persuade people not to have abortions, and have been found to give out false information. If we all just instinctively understood abortion to be a terrible thing, why would the anti-abortion movement need to go to such lengths to fuel the lie that abortion is dangerous?
Let’s drop the pretense that being anti-abortion is actually about children’s rights, or women’s rights.
The reality of abortion restrictions is that women suffer and die. Families are harmed. Research shows that infant mortality has increased following the repeal of legal abortion protections in the US.
The so-called ‘pro-life’ movement claims to care about children and mothers, yet their policies leave people without access to healthcare, force pregnancies in dangerous conditions, and punish those who seek reproductive autonomy. As abortion activist Marge Berer points out: “The best way to control women’s lives is through (the risk of) pregnancy.”
The good news is, because abortion stigma is made-up, we can tear it down.
By getting to the roots of why abortion stigma has flourished we have a chance to question it. Indeed, public surveys show that most of us do not support the criminalisation of people who have abortions.
Despite a lot of work to try to demonise and punish those who have abortions, many of us are resisting and refusing this narrative. We do not have to accept abortion stigma as inevitable. We can think for ourselves about what’s right for our lives, our families, and our communities. We can support reproductive freedom and autonomy—for ourselves and for future generations.
What can you do today to bust the myth of abortion stigma?
By Laura Hurley, Programme Advisor and Communications Lead at SAAF.
Photo credit: Nina Robinson/Getty Images/Images of Empowerment