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[...]even (especially) the most idealistic of us are anxious about devoting our lives to activities that may not yield benefit to others when there is so much constructive work that surely needs to be done: healing the sick, helping the destitute, teaching the ignorant, or just showing up for an \"uncreative\" everyday job. All the same, the daily labor of science or humanistic study is not what we mean by creative work, however much it may serve as preparation for and verification of our creative moments. Creating a scholarly treatise or a work of art leaves an external object that endures in time and space. In a certain sense, a life well-lived is a work of art, which we cherish in others, as is evident in the fact that we often ask those who are wise to mediate conflicts or call upon them for personal counsel when we've made a mess of our relationships.

Research consistently shows that individuals who have had abortions who identify as religious, particularly Christian (Evangelical, Catholic, or Protestant) are more likely to experience various forms of abortion stigma, especially felt stigma and internalized stigma (Cockrill & Nack, 2013; Cockrill et al., 2013; Cutler et al., 2021; Hanschmidt et al., 2016). Even those who do not identify with a religion may still experience stigma shaped by dominant religious norms in American culture (Frohwirth et al., 2018). However, little is known about how this applies to members of minority religious groups, such as Jews. This qualitative study draws on data from 31 semi-structured interviews with Jewish individuals who obtained abortions in the US between 2015 and 2024 to explore how they experienced abortion stigma and how their Jewish identity influenced their perception and internalization of that stigma. Thematic analysis showed that research participants were highly aware of the pervasive abortion stigma in the United States and often limited disclosure of their abortion to avoid anticipated judgment (felt stigma). Some participants also described experiences of enacted stigma, such as encounters with protesters at abortion clinics or judgmental family members, and a few expressed internalized stigma in the form of guilt or self-blame. Yet, most participants also actively resisted stigma by asserting the legitimacy of their abortions and by reframing abortion as ethical and compassionate. For many, Judaism played a protective role against the negative effects of stigma by providing a framework that supported and affirmed their abortion decisions as morally acceptable within their faith, community, and cultural history. These findings, in contrast to earlier scholarship on abortion stigma, illustrate an alternate framework in which religion and culture can mitigate rather than amplify abortion stigma, reinforcing the idea that stigma is culturally constructed and varies across communities.

Given the momentary similarities between her fate and mine, it was natural that some of my thoughts were devoted to my aunt, who endured not a few days of indignity but a life sentence without parole, utterly at the mercy of others, some nice, some less nice, surrounded like me, day and night, by the howling of her fellow human beings, and like them, but unlike me, by the hopelessness of her state. Had I failed, in my youth, to empathize properly with her impotence and helplessness, with her experience of abandonment, with the lack of a voice that could break through her prison and command the response and respect of strangers? Much of my advocacy of liberal arts education in the service of religious commitment is connected to its potential contribution to human sympathy and understanding.

This essay is a contribution to this issue's forum on French Jewish studies.