The Sociology of Women's Abortion Experiences: Recent Research and Future Directions

Abstract

Abortion is a common and essential reproductive healthcare procedure experienced by approximately one third of women at some time in their life. Abortion is also commonly politicised and presented in public discourse as inherently contentious or controversial. However, recent sociological research on women's experiences of abortion is relatively thin on the ground. The body of qualitative research on abortion experiences, which does exist, varies in scope and focus on a relatively limited range of themes. Building on an earlier review of qualitative research on women's abortion experiences, this paper explores the recent literature and identifies three key thematic areas: the context of abortion; reasons and decision-making; and abortion stigma. It then goes on to identify gaps in the literature, to explore what shape a sociology of women's abortion experiences might take and to suggest future directions for sociological research.

The place of abortion in the pregnancy decision‐making process in young adult women in Catalonia, Spain

“…Our findings are consistent with other studies analysing women's abortion experiences (Purcell ), in which young adult women feel responsible for their unintended pregnancy and also for the decision to have an induced abortion. As noted before, this reinforces the unequal societal burden placed on women to take responsibility for prevention of unintended pregnancy.…”

More than stigma: Interrogating counter narratives of abortion

“…In reviewing sociological literature on women’s abortion experiences Purcell argues that the focus on women’s reasons for abortion, which flows from the public health imperative to prevent abortion, ‘places limitations on the kinds of questions that can be asked’ (2015: 591). In scholarship on stigma, a ‘particularly common hook’ in recent literature (Purcell, 2015: 590), research is also tapered to focus on negative outcomes and contexts. Despite frequently noting that women experience more positive than negative emotions after abortion, researchers explicitly target women who have had negative experiences (Kimport, 2012: 110), design their questions to ‘elicit narratives of difficult experiences’ (Cockrill and Nack, 2013: 976) or give more weight to negative than positive emotions (Rocca et al., 2015: 4), or they dwell on factors that can predict negative outcomes, without equal attention to predictive factors for positive outcomes (Foster et al., 2012: 88).…”

Moral dilemmas and abortion decision-making: Lessons learnt from abortion research in England and Wales

“…These challenges to current abortion provision, alongside the frequently expressed assumption that abortion is inherently undesirable, have contributed to what has been termed 'the awfulisation of abortion' (Hadley, 1996) and 'abortion negativity' (Lee, Clements, Ingham, & Stone, 2004). Some UK researchers have also theorised this negativity through the study of abortion-related stigma, and its effect on women seeking an abortion (Astbury-Ward, Parry, & Carnwell, 2012;Hoggart, 2017;Purcell, 2014). The political and policy context for the research discussed here is thus one in which abortion is often framed as necessary though undesirable, and imbued with moral uncertainties (Furedi, 2014(Furedi, , 2016Greasley 2017).…”