Abortion information seeking: Engaged patients, stigma, and emotion work

Patients' experiences of obtaining information for stigmatized health concerns remain understudied. We examine abortion patients' accounts of abortion information-seeking and the emotions they brought to or developed from that process. Drawing on 41 interviews with Ohio abortion patients, we find that information work, the labor of assembling and evaluating health information, involved emotion work. Abortion stigma intensified this emotion work. Consequently, participants engaged in different strategies to minimize this labor, including avoiding information when faced with stigma and misinformation. We argue that the current abortion information environment often burdens abortion seekers and that information-seeking may not always be beneficial in stigmatized health contexts. Our findings have implications for understanding patient engagement and avoidance in abortion care, with implications for how people seek and manage information in other emotional or politicized health contexts.