Study documenting how women and men who disclosed abortions perceived others' reactions and determinants of those perceptions and found that whereas most people disclosing an abortion received support or sympathy, a substantial minority received stigmatizing reactions, which could plausibly have a negative impact on health.

‘To decide in order to live’ is a radio novela about the histories of women and men who take important decisions in the face of difficult situations in their lives. These decisions break down barriers and are possible because they are based in human rights. The characters and situations are based on real-life – life stories that echo in your heart.

A comparative case study investigating the efficacy and acceptability of laws and policies that permit conscientious objection and ensure access to legal abortion service.

A qualitative study exploring pregnancy intentions among low-income women in Western Pennsylvania. Authors found that women's reactions to antiabortion attitudes may perpetuate abortion stigma

A synthesis of qualitative literature that reports findings about abortion stigma paints a picture of how stigma appears in different geographic regions, and across the different levels of the ecological model.

A systematic literature review found that more research, using validated measures, is needed to enhance understanding of abortion stigma and thereby reduce its impact on affected individuals.

A systematic review of articles and reports focused on indicators of quality abortion care found that there is little agreement about indicators for measuring quality; more work is needed to ensure efforts to assess quality are informed and coordinated.

A video panel describing the different contexts of women who seek abortion after the first trimester.

Although abortion is now legal in Kenya under expanded circumstances, access is limited and many providers and individuals still believe it is illegal. This study aimed to characterise Kenyan women’s perceptions and experiences with abortion and post-abortion care (PAC) services in Nairobi regarding barriers to care, beliefs about abortion, and perceived stigma. In response to stigma, participants developed a sense of agency and self-reliance, which allowed them to prioritise their own healthcare needs over the concerns of others. To adequately address perceived stigma as a barrier to abortion- and PAC-seeking, significant cultural norm shifting is required.

Although Benevolent Sexism (BS)—an ideology that highly reveres women who conform to traditional gender roles—is cloaked in a superficially positive tone, being placed upon a pedestal is inherently restrictive.

Although illegal abortion is believed to be widely practised in Haiti, few data exist on such practices. This study aimed to learn about illegal abortion access, methods, and perceived barriers to abortion-related care. Additionally, the study aimed to identify the proportion of unscheduled antepartum visits to a public hospital that were attributable to unsafe abortion in Cap Haitien, Haiti. Among the focus groups, there was widespread knowledge of misoprostol self-managed abortion. Women described use of multiple agents in combination with misoprostol. Men played key roles in abortion decision-making and in accessing misoprostol.

An evaluation was conducted to assess women's access to abortion services as part of an ongoing program to operationalize the new exemptions for legal abortion. Abortion stigma and court order requirement are major barriers to access services.

Analysis explores how stigma contributes to unethical behavior by physicians resulting in care that is delayed or refused.

Analysis of nationally representative data to estimate the prevalence of negative abortion attitudes in South Africa and to identify racial, socioeconomic and geographic differences.

Analysis of social media used and perceived stigma suggest that stigma has a similar dampening effect on face-to-face and Twitter interactions.

Analysis of Texas abortion law exploring how language in legislative documents use generates abortion stigma.

Approximately 47 000 women die each year worldwide as a result of the complications of unsafe abortion, almost exclusively in low- and middle-income countries with restrictive abortion laws. In these countries, very few women who comply with the conditions imposed by the law can access safe abortion services in the public health system. The main obstacle is the unwillingness of gynecologists and obstetricians to provide abortion services by claiming conscientious objection, which is often used to hide their fear of the stigma associated with abortion. This happens because many colleagues are unaware that without access to legal services these women will resort to an unsafe abortion and its consequences. This violates the statement from FIGO's Committee for the Ethical Aspects of Human Reproduction and Women's Health, which asserts that: “The primary conscientious duty of obstetrician–gynecologists is at all times to treat, or provide benefit and prevent harm, to the patients for whose care they are responsible. Any conscientious objection to treating a patient is secondary to this primary duty.”

Article about the movement towards a democractic vote for abortion rights in Ireland

Article analysis of the consequences of unsafe abortion in Malawi based on 485 in-depth interviews. Stigma related to unwanted pregnancy and to abortion discussed.

Article commentary discussion the stigmatization of abortion within the context of medicine.

Article commentary exploring what a world without abortion stigma might look like at the individual, community, and institutional level.

Article conceptualizing abortion stigma roots, manifestations and impacts. Lays out a research agenda to measure and map abortion stigma and impact on health.

Article describing rates of internalized stigma in the USA; comparison by race/Hispanic ethnicity.

Article describing small rural community context in Ghana, contrasting social restrictions around abortion to national-level laws that permit it.

Article describing sociohistorical and geopolitical context for Indonesia's abortion laws and culture.

Article describing the development of a scale to measure individual-level abortion stigma. Includes an analysis of the characteristics of women who report abortion stigma.

Article describing the development of the Stigmatizing Attitudes, Beliefs, and Actions Scale grounded in qualitative research in Ghana and Zambia

Article describing the history and development of abortion counseling in the United States.

Article discussing abortion stigma and how it manifests. Includes an analysis of legal restrictions and abortion stigma in US Supreme Court decisions.

Article discussing abortion stigma, drawing from social science literature to describe groups affected by abortion stigma.

Article discussing barriers to safe abortion internationally

Article discussing implications for privileging faith-based organizations for international development aid.

Article discussing qualitative findngs contextualizing unsafe abortion in rural Ghana, identifying shame and stigma as a key theme.

Article discussing the manifestation and consequences of stigma in reproductive health.

Article examines circumstances underlying adolescent girls' decisions to have abortions outside of the health care setting. Stigma identified as a barrier to safe abortion.

Article examines how the US Supreme Court's abortion decisions contribute to abortion stigma.

Article examines the economic consequences of the stigmatisation and illegality of abortion and its almost complete removal from public health services in Poland since the late 1980s

Article examining abortion stigma in five countries. Stigma was perceived in both legally liberal and restrictive settings.

Article examining abortion discourse among Bolivian doctors.

Article examining abortion practice in the Carribean. Findings suggest that an increasing number of women are self-inducing abortions with misoprostol to avoid doctors, high fees and public stigma

Article examining evidence-based practices for providing emotional care for other stigmatized services. Discusses these strategies and applying them to abortion care settings.

Article examining lay narratives and their implications about abortion among men and women in central Kenya.

Article examining stigma construction in "post-abortion recovery groups" and its linkages to anti-abortion activism

Article examining stigmatizing attitudes towards abortion among HIV positive women who choose to end a pregnancy and those who choose to give birth.

Article explores relationship between stigma and abortion complications in the US, where unsafe abortion is rare.

Article explores the experience of doctors and how they are prevented and prohibited from performing abortions in both explicit and implicit ways.

Article explores the role that stigma the role of a clinician as a social, economic, and political agent in determining how conscientious objection is practiced.

Article exploring experience of stigma among health care providers. Findings suggest that the experience of stigma for those providing abortion care is not a static or fixed loss of status. It is a dynamic situation in which those vulnerable to stigmatization can avoid, resist, or transform the stigma that would attach to them by varying degrees within selective contex

Article exploring HIV-positive women's abortion decisions in South Africa. Findings suggest that stigma and discrimination affect connections between abortion, pregnancy and HIV/AIDS, and that abortion may be more stigmatised than HIV/AIDS

Article exploring how low-income abortion clients in US states where public funding was and was not available perceived the role of public funding.

Article exploring how men and women make decisions about pregancy and abortion in Peru. Stigma surrounding abortion and some pregnancies identified.

Article exploring psychometric properties of a scale to measure stigma experienced by abortion providers.

Article exploring the experience of young women terminating pregnancy in a tertiary hospital abortion clinic in India.

Article exploring the sources, experiences and consequences of abortion stigma among women who had abortions, their male partners, and the general population.

Article looking at social stigma, motherhood, and physicians' experience in Ghana.

Article offers a social-psychological framework for understanding how women manage the stigma of having an abortion.

Article presenting a sociological framework for understnading how new cultural constructions that draw equivalences and remove blame shape public and structural stigma over time.

Article presenting findings from a nationally representative survey about stigmatizing attitudes in Mexico.

Article presenting results from qualitative inquiry into attitudes towards abortion and unwanted pregnancy in in Amukpe, Nigeria.

Article presenting theoretical framework for describing the narratives of abortion decision-making in Ethiopia.

Article presents a refined conceptual framework for abortion stigma and proposes a learning agenda to guide research and programmatic efforts to address abortion stigma.

Article presents a theoretical overview of stigma and a taxonomy of four types of stigma (public, self, by association, and structural).

Article presents an application of stigma theory to nurses attending abortions.

Article proposes three major strategies that would help to destigmatise abortion in the Ghana.

Article providing results from qualitative pilot study of post-abortion intervention designed to mitigate the effects of abortion by creating a "culture of support." Results suggest that women felt positively about the intervention.

Article reporting characteristics of women seeking abortion in Iran based on Iran Low Fertility Survey and exploring reasons for and consequences of abortion using in-depth interviews. Stigma discussed.

Article reporting findings from an evaluation of the Provider Share Workshop intervention to reduce stigma experienced by abortion providers in the US.

Article reporting findings from interviews with Ghanain physicians, which identifies stigma as a key factor leading to abortion complications.

Article reporting on a validation of the key ingredients of contact-based interventions to address stigma associated with mental illness.

Article reporting qualitative findings illustrating stigma as a factor in post-abortion care.

Authors adapted global stigma and discrimination measurement tools and field tested them for use in Thailand, including a health facility questionnaire to capture staff attitudes, and the policy environment, and a brief questionnaire for people living with HIV to capture their experiences.

Authors developed an analyzed multi-dimensional measures of norms and stigmas around all pregnancy decisions in the U.S. South.

Authors explored reproductive agency in relation to unsafe abortion among young women seeking post-abortion care and found that reproductive agency was constrained by gender norms and power imbalances and strongly influenced by stigma.

Authors present a illustrative evidence on the health consequences of stigma and a conceptual framework describing the psychological and structural pathways through which stigma influences health.

Authors propose a framework to understand stigma using a multilevel approach that can be tailored to stigmatized statuses.

BACKGROUND: The aim of this post-intervention assessment was to measure the effects of community intervention on the knowledge and attitudes of women regarding safe abortion in Ethiopia. METHODS: In 2014, following implementation of an educational intervention on sexual and reproductive health from December 2012 to December 2013, 800 women were interviewed about their knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding abortion. Multivariate regression analyses of respondents' demographics, sources of abortion information, knowledge and attitudes about safe abortion were conducted. RESULTS: More women in the intervention community knew safe abortion was available in the community (76% vs. 57%; p < 0.001). Women in the intervention community had greater odds of feeling that women should have access to safe abortion services (adjusted odds ratio [aOR]: 1.55, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.06, 2.28) after adjusting for socio-demographic characteristics. They had significantly greater odds of feeling comfortable and confident talking to a healthcare provider (aOR: 2.44, 95% CI: 1.55, 3.84) and/or her partner (aOR: 2.47, 95% CI: 1.58, 3.85) about abortion. CONCLUSIONS: Increased mobilization of community networks in disseminating sexual health and abortion information was followed by increased knowledge of abortion services in the intervention community and improved reproductive choices for women.

Barriers related to knowledge and information, along with logistic, emotional, financial, cultural and religious barriers culminated in delays in obtaining comprehensive abortion services. Religion influenced social stigma, which manifested most powerfully in the obstructive behavior of health care providers and health insurance companies. Lack of understanding of current laws on abortion and conscientious objection was evident on the part of patients, health care providers and insurers.

Based on content analysis of online pregnancy forums, researchers identified attitudes towards abortion as a factor in women's decision-making about genetic screening.

Based on qualitative interviews with unmarried women in Iran, researchers found that the stigma surrounding sexuality activity creates limitations for unmarried women in accessing reproductive health services, even when services are available.

Based on themes from an inroads-member discussion, this proposed framework integrates concepts of stigma with the WHO framework for quality care.

Best practice tools for health facilities to counter stigma related to HIV status, gender identity, sexual orientation, and behaviors such as sex work or drug use.

Blog post explores how popular culture can play a role in either upholding stigma or dismantling it.

Blog post highlights steps for identifying, adapting and implementing scales to measure abortion stigma.

Blog post reporting an interview with Katie Gillum about using video to destigmatize and normalize women's experiences with abortion.

Book chapter examines how legal actors advovate, regulate and adjudicate abortion and its relationship to stigma.

Briefing that provides information, ideas and tools to help facilitate dynamic workshops. Aimed at CBOs and NGOs working HIV and AIDS. Not specific to stigma, but an essential skill in stigma busting.

Briefing that provides information, ideas and tools to help facilitate dynamic workshops. Not specific to stigma, but an essential skill in stigma busting.

Commentary and agenda for action for getting misoprostol in women's hands.

Commentary discussing legitimacy paradox: when abortion providers do not disclose their work, their silence perpetuates a stereotype that abortion work is unusual, or that legitimate, mainstream doctors do not perform abortions.

Commentary examining conceptualization of abortion stigma and argument for precision in understanding stigma in order to carry out better research to understand and measure it, design interventions to mitigate it, and evaluate those interventions.

Comparison of reported HIV stigma experienced by women requesting contraception at inegrated sexual health clinics vs. family planning-only clinics in the UK. Perceived stigma is higher at integrated clinics than family planning-only.

Content analysis of television plotlines found that abortion is presented differently depending on legal setting, and that abortion provision is linked to violence

Cross-sectional examination of midwives' attitudes toward abortion in Ethiopia to understand their decisions about service provision.

Currently, abortion can be lawfully performed in China at any gestational stage for a wide range of social and medical reasons. This article critically explores the Chinese regulatory model of abortion in order to examine its practical effects on women

Description of an 8-week course on managing stigma based on social psychology and social neuroscience research. Includes conceptualization of stigma and recommendations for intervention.

Description of the implementation of 5 Safe Abortion Information Hotlines in countries where abortion is restricted.

Description of the making of a film to share knowledge about barriers to safe abortion in Asia and to facilitate conversations about the right to safe abortion.

Despite the presence of abortion services in Great Britain, a diverse group of women still experiences logistical and personal barriers to accessing care through the formal healthcare system, or prefer the privacy of conducting their abortions in their own homes.