Abortion stigma, class and embodiment in neoliberal England

Research on abortion stigma has given insight into how women experience abortion, tell stories about abortion, and make decisions about abortion. Stigma encompasses a range of feelings, experiences and discourses that can make having an abortion a negative experience or one that women might wish to conceal. This paper explores how abortion stigma is both classed and embodied, using the life stories of 15 middle-class women who have had abortions in England in 'neoliberal times'. It argues that the women's class position gave them access to various discursive resources with which to articulate their abortion stories, shaping their experiences and narration of stigma. It also draws attention to the ways in which both class and stigma are 'made through marking' on the body, and thus to the under-theorised embodied aspects of abortion stigma. In doing so, it argues that abortion stigma acts as a regulatory 'technology of the self' that is enabled by middle-class practices of self-control.