Safe Abortion

Do perceived contraception attitudes influence abortion stigma? Evidence from Luanda, Angola

Ndola Prata
Madeline Blodgett
Karen Weidert
Benjamin Nieto-Andrade
2018

Abortion stigma is influenced by a variety of factors. Previous research has documented a range of contributors to stigma, but the influence of perceived social norms about contraception has not been significantly investigated. This study assesses the influence of perceived social norms about contraception on abortion stigma among women in Luanda, Angola. This analysis uses data from the 2012 Angolan Community Family Planning Survey. Researchers employed multi-stage random sampling to collect demographic, social, and reproductive information from a representative sample of...

Transportation cost as a barrier to contraceptive use among women initiating treatment for HIV in Tanzania

Lauren A Hunter
Ndola Prata
Brenda Eskenazi
Prosper F Njau
Sandra I McCoy
2022

Transportation cost is a barrier to HIV treatment, yet no studies have examined its association with contraceptive use among women living with HIV. We analyzed cross-sectional data from women attending three public healthcare facilities in Shinyanga, Tanzania where they initiated antiretroviral therapy for HIV infection in the previous 90 days; all facilities offered free contraception. Women self-reported current contraceptive use and the round-trip cost of transportation to the facility. Among 421 women aged 18–49, 86 (20.4%) were using any modern contraceptive method, of which...

Shining the light on abortion: Drivers of online abortion searches across the United States in 2018

Ndola Prata
Sylvia Guendelman
Elizabeth Pleasants
Elena Yon
Alan Hubbard
2020

Context

Legal abortion restrictions, stigma and fear can inhibit people’s voices in clinical and social

settings posing barriers to decision-making and abortion care. The internet allows individuals
to make informed decisions privately. We explored what state-level policy dimensions were
associated with volume of Google searches on abortion and on the abortion pill in 2018.

Methods

We used Google Trends to quantify the relative search volume (RSV) for “abortion” and
“abortion pill” (or “abortion pills” hereafter referred to as “abortion pill”) as a...

Quality of top webpages providing abortion pill information for Google searches in the USA: An evidence-based webpage quality assessment

Ndola Prata
Karen Weidert
Sylvia Guendelman
Elizabeth Pleasants
2021

Background

In the United States, the internet is widely used to seek health information. Despite an estimated 18 million Google searches on abortion per year and the demonstrated importance of the abortion pill as an option for pregnancy termination, the top webpage search results for abortion pill searches, as well as the content and quality of those webpages, are not well understood.

Methods
We used Google’s Custom Search Application Programming Interface (API) to identify the top 10 webpages presented for “abortion pill” searches on...

Abortion access barriers shared in “r/abortion” after Roe: a qualitative analysis of a Reddit community post-Dobbs decision leak in 2022

Elizabeth Pleasants
Karen Weidert
Lindsay Parham
Ndola Prata
Ushma Upadhyay
Eliza Dolgins
Emma Anderson
Coye Cheshire
Cassondra Marshall
2024

With drastic changes to abortion policy, the months following the Dobbs leak and subsequent decision in 2022 were a uniquely uncertain and difficult time for abortion access in the United States. To understand experiences of challenges to abortion access during that time, we used a hybrid inductive and
deductive thematic coding approach to analyse descriptions of barriers and their impacts shared in an abortion subreddit (r/abortion). A simple random sample of 10% of posts was obtained from those shared from 02 May 2022 through 23 December 2022; comments were purposively sampled during...

The association of experiences of medical mistrust and mistreatment and ever considering self-managing an abortion.

Aliza Adler
M Antonia Biggs
Shelly Kaller
Rosalyn Schroeder
Ndola Prata
Karen Scott
Lauren Ralph
2025

Objective: To assess the prevalence of ever considering self-managing an abortion (SMA) and its associations with experiences of medical mistrust and mistreatment in a nationally representative sample.

Study design: In 2021-22, we conducted a national, cross-sectional, online probability-based survey of US people assigned female at birth ages 15-49. Among those who had ever been pregnant, we ran weighted multivariable logistic regressions to examine whether having had difficulty trusting medical providers and/or experiencing medical mistreatment was...

Using Natural Language Processing to Describe the Use of an Online Community for Abortion During 2022: Dynamic Topic Modeling Analysis of Reddit Posts

Elizabeth Pleasants
Ndola Prata
Ushma D Upadhyay
Cassondra Marshall
Coye Cheshire
2025
Background Abortion access in the United States has been in a state of rapid change and increasing restriction since the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision from the US Supreme Court in June 2022. With further constraints on access to abortion since Dobbs, the internet and online communities are playing an increasingly important role in people’s abortion trajectories. There is a need for a broader understanding of how online resources are used for abortion and how they may reflect changes in the sociopolitical and legal context of abortion access. Research...

Innovation through telemedicine to improve medication abortion access in primary health centers: findings from a pilot study in Musanze District, Rwanda

Ndola Prata
Karen Weidert
Evangeline Dushimeyesu
Eugène Kanyamanza
Dushimiyimana Blaise
Sharon Umutesi
Eugène Ngoga
Felix Sayinzoga
2025

In 2012 Rwanda expanded legal grounds for abortion to include cases of rape, incest, forced marriage, the health of a pregnant person or fetus at risk, and for minors on request in 2018. The penal code limits abortion care to doctors in hospitals, impeding access for many women. We tested an intervention that provides first-trimester medication abortion at primary health centers, using telemedicine to connect nurses/midwives to doctors in district hospitals for authorization of services. We implemented a 15-month prospective study to assess the feasibility, effectiveness, safety, and...

Have Others Had This Experience? A Qualitative Analysis of Posts on Self-Managed Abortion to US-Based Reddit Community

Karen Weidert
Ndola Prata
Lindsay Parham
Eliza Dolgins
Emma Anderson
Elizabeth Pleasants
2025

Objectives: Limiting abortion within the formal health care system is associated with more self-managed abortion (SMA). Reddit is a publicly available social networking site that allows users to create and join communities (“subreddits”) around a specific topic. R/abortion is a subreddit dedicated to providing support and advice to people seeking or having an abortion. The purpose of this study is to analyze r/abortion data after the Dobbs leak in 2022 to explore SMA access and use experiences shared in the community.

Methods: We employed a hybrid qualitative thematic analysis...

Behavioral Innovations to Access Abortion Post-Dobbs: A Qualitative Thematic Analysis of Reddit’s r/abortion Community in 2022

Eliza Dolgins
Lindsay Parham
Karen Weidert
Emma Anderson
Coye Cheshire
Ndola Prata
Elizabeth Pleasants
2025

Following the leak of the Dobbs decision in 2022, abortion access in the United States has faced heightened barriers, including legal restrictions, financial constraints, and logistical challenges. In response, individuals seeking abortion care can employ innovative behavioral strategies to overcome these barriers and reshape their abortion experiences (ie, “behavioral innovations”). This paper explores the behavioral innovations to access abortion that people discussed and recommended within a geographically dispersed community of peers on an abortion-supportive Reddit community (r/...