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Influence Of Abortion Stigma, Behaviour Pattern And Distress Tolerance On Substance Use Amongst Adolescents
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International Project Assistance Services (Ipas) in
1978, defined abortion stigma as “negative attribute ascribed to women
who seek to terminate a pregnancy that ‘marks’ them as inferior to
ideals of womanhood.â€. Abortion stigma, an important phenomenon for
individuals who have had abortions or are otherwise connected to
abortion, is under-researched and under-theorized. The few existing
studies focus only on women who have had abortions, which in the United
States represents about one third of women by age 45 (Henshaw, 1998).
Kumar, Hessini, and Mitchell (2009) recently theorized that women who
seek abortions challenge localized cultural norms about the “essential
nature†of women. It is posited that abortion stigma may also apply to
medical professionals who provide abortions, friends and family members
who support abortion patients, and perhaps even to prochoice advocates.
The following questions are essential here; does abortion stigma affect
persons stemming from the same root as the victim? Do they experience
this stigma in the same way as the victim? This questions are predicated
on Kumar et al', (2009) work by exploring how different groups
experience abortion stigma and what this tells us about why abortion is
stigmatized.
Silence is an important mechanism for
individuals coping with abortion stigma; people hope that if no one
knows about their relationship to abortion, they cannot be stigmatized.
Nevertheless, even a concealed stigma may lead to an internal experience
of stigma and health consequences (Quinn & Chaudior, 2009). Goffman
in 1963 described stigma as “an attribute that is deeply discrediting,â€
reducing the possessor “from a whole and usual person to a tainted,
discounted one.†Many have built on Goffman’s definition over the past
45 years, a but two components of stigmatization consistently appear
across disciplines: The perception of negative characteristics and the
global devaluation of the possessor. On their part, Kumar et al. (2009)
define abortion stigma as “a negative attribute ascribed to women who
seek to terminate a pregnancy that marks them, internally or externally,
as inferior to ideals of womanhood†(p. 628, emphasis added). Like
Kumar et al. (2009), we dispute any “universality†of abortion stigma.
We retain their useful multilevel conceptualization, understanding
stigma as created across all levels of human interaction: between
individuals, in communities, in institutions, in law and government
structures, and in framing discourses (Kumar et al., 2009).
The experience of abortion stigma can be transitory or episodic for
some abortion patients. Abortion may not become a salient part of their
self-concept and may re-emerge only at key moments. For example, a woman
who rarely thinks of the abortion she had 20 years ago may find herself
face-to-face with abortion stigma when her new father-in-law loudly
asserts anti-abortion rhetoric at a holiday dinner or she may
re-experience it when she is asked about her reproductive history by her
obstetrician. Thus, caution is made against reification of individually
experienced abortion stigma as something that one always “has†or is
always salient. Women who have had abortions are a heterogeneous group
(Jones et al., 2010). Their reasons for terminating their pregnancies
also vary (Finer, Frohwirth, Dauphinee, Singh, & Moore, 2005). In
public discourse and from the perspective of women having abortions,
however, the idea that there are “good abortions†and “bad abortionsâ€
stemming from “good†and “bad†reasons for having them, is prevalent.
Stigma experienced by women who have had abortions may be mitigated or
exacerbated by whether their abortions fall into one category or the
other. “Good abortions†are those judged to be more socially acceptable,
characterized by one or more of the following: A fetus with major
malformations, a pregnancy that occurred despite a reliable method of
contraception, a first-time abortion an abortion in the case of rape or
incest, a very young woman, or a contrite woman who is in a monogamous
relationship. “Bad abortions,†in contrast, occur at later gestational
ages and are had by “selfish†women who have had multiple previous
abortions without using contraception (Furedi, 2001). Women who have had
abortions may be both the stigmatizer and the stigmatized, believing
they had “good abortions†and distancing themselves from others who had
“bad abortions†(Rapp, 2000). These moral distinctions may be drawn by
any woman having an abortion, whether anti-abortion or prochoice
(Arthur, 2000).
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]The study assessed the influence of abortion stigma, behaviour pattern and distress tolerance on substance use amongst adolescents. In determining the influence of of abortion stigma, behaviour pattern and distress tolerance on substance use amongst adolescents, four (4) scales were used namely; Abortion stigma Scale by Shellenberg, KM, Levandowski, B., Hessini, L. (2014), Type A behaviour scale by (Omoluabi, 1997), Distress tolerance scale by Simon and Gaher’s (2005), and Substance use s ... Continue reading---
