Social Issue

The social disapproval that still largely characterizes recourse to abortion is expressed in many ways: it ranges from a refusal of the right to abortion or the lack of visibility of this issue on the international agenda (for example, no mention is made of it in the Sustainable Development Goals), to opposition of conservative American administrations to the financing of these programs ( the global gag rule) (Singh and Karim, 2017; Starrs, 2017), to the reluctance of women to talk about their abortions. It is also reflected in sanctions and the imprisonment of women in certain countries, in discriminatory treatment in health centers both for the management of abortions and for the treatment of complications, or even in the difficulty of finding personnel qualified health professionals providing this type of service.

“The social condemnation of abortion is linked to the conception of the role of women in society: those for whom women are above all mothers perceive the renunciation of motherhood as deviant behavior. Because gender relations remain unequal in many countries of the world and because the vision of women remains strongly attached to motherhood, the practice of abortion is often stigmatized, although to varying degrees depending on the society”