“They don’t really have a responsibility if you think about it”: Couples’ Abortion Care Work

• In Event: 4463 - Framing Reproductive Decision-making

Abstract

The gendered division of health behavior work is both a result and a cause of gender inequality, with reproductive activities as a special area of attention for scholars. Yet very little attention has been paid to gendered responsibility for abortion. We argue that more attention is necessary for three reasons: discourse of choice, abortion stigma, and increasingly restrictive abortion landscapes. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews with 22 abortion patients who reside in Ohio. In our findings so far, most women were taking primary or exclusive responsibility for preventing pregnancy, figuring out how to manage their pregnancy, and making the arrangements to have an abortion and paying for it. Women varied in how much help they wanted in different stages of this process, but most women felt they could expect or require very little from their partners – or even that they should expect anything from them. A minority of men provided instrumental – most notably, payment, transportation, and childcare – and emotional support. Our findings show how the cultural messages contained in the slogan of “my body, my choice” work to reinforce the existing division of labor in reproduction, by tying women’s choices to their exclusive responsibility, thereby reinforcing and exacerbating gender inequality.

Authors

• Danielle Bessett, University of Cincinnati

• Orlaith Heymann, University of Cincinnati

• Tamika Corinne Odum, University of Cincinnati - Blue Ash

• Alison Norris