The effort to take away a woman’s ability to make independent decisions is rooted in abortion stigma: the process of dehumanizing and discriminating against women, not for who they are, but because they need an abortion. How is it that in the 21st century women still do not have the right to make a decision about one of the most profound and life-transforming decisions any person can make: whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term or to become a parent for life?

Abortion stigma is a form of gender discrimination and punishment, and it represents social control of both women who need abortions and providers who provide them.

We have to keep naming abortion stigma for what it is; we have to keep calling it out. And we have to work together to find ways to both mitigate it and reflect on the societal mechanisms that produce it and structures and systems that support it.

- Leila Hessini, Ipas / Global Fund for Women