Getting Beyond Stigma, Centering Dignity, Combatting Mis-&-Dis Information

AMSA Reproductive Health Project eNews #71 – May 23, 2026

Greetings from the AMSA Reproductive Health Project!

We are at the end of May and suddenly the cool of Spring is turning to the heat of Summer. It hardly seems possible that we are already nearly half-way through 2026! And in fact, we have just hosted the first of our half-dozen Summer 2026 AMSA Abortion Care and Reproductive Justice Institutes! Between May and August, we will be gathering around 60 future physicians in a retreat setting in the Smoky Mountains of the Asheville, NC area. The students gathered for each four-day, weekend institute spend the time in discussion with each other and with experts in policy on the interconnections between abortion care access, reproductive justice, and the potential impact of physicians using their/our collective power and voices.

Speaking of the potential impact of future physicians, be sure to read this newsletter’s Spotlight essay co-written by Dr. Taylor Spears, AMSA’s Reproductive Health Project Fellow, and Donya Ahmadian, AMSA’s Legislative Affairs Director. Their essay, Beyond Stigma: Centering Dignity, Freedom, and Choice in Reproductive Health, highlights the public health crisis that abortion stigma creates and how we, within the profession of Medicine, can (and must) work to reduce both the stigma and the impact of that stigma – and since a significant portion of anti-abortion stigma originates from within the House of Medicine, there is actually much that we can do!

An area where medical and premedical students can fight abortion stigma and have a big impact is in combatting misinformation and disinformation about abortion care. False information about abortion isn’t just the grotesque pictures held up by anti-abortion extremists which create the false impression that a six-or-12-week embryo looks exactly like a fully formed baby. That’s definitely disinformation, too. But it is also the false claims, now being made by organizations such as Students for Life, that the metabolites of medication abortion are poisoning our drinking water and natural waterways. If you haven’t encountered these false claims yet, you should be aware that anti-abortion activists and organizations are weaponizing legitimate concerns about water contamination to create unfounded concerns about medication abortion – which they will refer to, propagandistically, as “chemical abortion”.

If you are interested to learn more about abortion misinformation and disinformation, and how we can effectively fight against and even neutralize it, we invite you to join us for one of two special upcoming AMSA Reproductive Justice Summer Institutes: 

Combatting Abortion Care & Reproductive Health Mis-&-Dis Information
Live & In-person in the Blue Ridge Mountains

Full Scholarships Available – Seats Limited
Application Deadline June 28

Premedical Students Summer 2026 Institute August 6 – 9
Medical Students Summer 2026 Institute August 27 – 30
Click HERE to learn more and apply today!

Beyond Stigma: Centering Dignity, Freedom, and Choice in Reproductive Health

Written by Donya Admadian, MS, MPH, AMSA Legislative Affairs Director
and Taylor Spears, MD, AMSA Reproductive Health Project Fellow

She could be your classmate sitting silently beside you in lecture, quietly calculating how many miles exist between her and the nearest clinic. All the while, lawmakers who will never even know her name debate her humanity from hundreds of miles away. 

She could be your future patient-navigating fear, uncertainty, and isolation beneath the fluorescent lights of an emergency room. Your sibling. Your colleague. Considering that 1 in 4 women in the U.S. have an abortion by age 45, the chances of these people being near and dear to you are extremely high (ACOG, Abortion care 2022).

Abortion care in the 21st century continues to be discussed as abstraction before humanity- as politics before personhood. 

From early in our medical careers, we are both directly and indirectly trained to stigmatize reproductive healthcare- through silence in our curricula and clinical rotations, through euphemisms that distance us from patients, through legislation that has no evidence-based foundation, and through institutional cultures that frame reproductive healthcare and abortion as controversial rather than deeply human forms of care. 

When care is treated as controversial, we inevitably create systems in which institutional judgment becomes the frame of reference through which patients are taught to understand themselves. People seeking abortion care are already forced to navigate tangible barriers- financial strain, geographic restriction, delayed access, legislative interference- yet layered atop these obstacles for many patients is an often unspoken psychological burden shaped by shame, fear, isolation, and the possibility of public scrutiny. According to the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, abortion does not increase the risk of depression (ACOG, Abortion care 2022). The UC San Francisco’s landmark Turnaway Study found that

“more than 95 percent of people who chose to have abortions reported that it was the right decision for them, when interviewed over the next five years.”

Given the stigma and the supposed “guilt” surrounding care, these facts alone corrects major misconceptions about the psychological toll of abortion care. 

It is critical to recognize that no two abortion experiences are identical, nor should distress be presumed as universal. And yet, what remains undeniably true is that nearly every patient seeking comprehensive reproductive healthcare must navigate anxieties and barriers produced by a society that has politicized bodily autonomy beyond recognition. We witness the fear of traveling hundreds of miles for care, the silence imposed by potential criminalization, the uncertainty of whether compassion will be met with judgment, and the quiet internalization of rhetoric that frames deeply personal healthcare decisions as a moral referendum rather than a human reality.

In this way, stigma itself becomes a public health issue and crisis- not only shaping access to care, but shaping the emotional conditions under which people are forced to survive, decide, and seek the care they deserve. Abortion care is healthcare because choice, freedom, autonomy and dignity are human rights– much like access to clean water, food, shelter and safety. Abortion care is safe and is at least 14 times safer than childbirth. Some studies have estimated that a complete abortion ban would increase maternal mortality by 21% (ACOG, Increasing access to abortion 2025). 

As future physicians and advocates, it is our moral duty and profound privilege to recognize that the consequences of our public discourse surrounding abortion care demands our attention. Increasing our understanding of the roots of abortion care stigma, and shining a light on its destructive impact on patients, providers, and communities are vital steps to ensuring all can access the care they need; and in achieving reproductive justice for all. Our collective language regarding reproductive care has the power to shape not only policy but to restore and invite liberation, dignity, non-judgement and compassion back into our medical practices.

So, let us be reminded that healthcare rooted in empathy and evidence-based care is not radical-
but the very foundation upon which medicine itself is meant to stand.

Watch & Share

What is abortion stigma? (4.33min)
The Sea Change Program & the Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Resources:
Abortion care. ACOG. (2022). https://www.acog.org/womens-health/faqs/induced-abortion
Increasing access to abortion. ACOG. (2025, January 16).
https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-statement/articles/2025/02/increasing-access-to-abortion
Into ACT!ON content library. Into Action Content Library. (n.d.).
Reproductive Health Care is a Human Right
https://giphy.com/gifs/IntoAction-reproductive-rights-bans-off-our-bodies-freedom-xsGiscW67U6EGrw9fh
Abortion Is Health Care https://library.into-action.us/media/18125/
UCSF Turnaway Study Shows Impact of Abortion Access on Well-Being.
https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2022/06/423161/ucsf-turnaway-study-shows-impact-abortion-access
NIRH Action Fund. https://www.instagram.com/p/DYU3xNuln_9/?img_index=2

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