ANSIRH research highlights 2018

Welcome to ANSIRH's 2018 research highlights page. We are proud to share our major accomplishments from this past year, including publications, media mentions, op-eds and awards. We are also excited to share our plans as we head into 2019.

Publications

In 2018, ANSIRH published 62 peer-reviewed research articles.

Below is a list of links to summaries for selected 2018 publications. To access a full list of our publications, visit our Journal Articles web page.  

• Medication abortion:
  • Research shows that women are interested in alternative ways of accessing medication abortion
  • Claims of success in so-called “abortion reversal” therapy lack evidence
  • Allowing pharmacists to dispense medication abortion on prescription could improve access to early abortion care
  • Women can safely and effectively self-induce abortion after receiving information from a healthcare provider about how to use misoprostol
  • Research roadmap seeks to expand access to medication abortion in safe, effective and user-friendly ways
• Abortion access:
  • Novel study identifies 27 large U.S. cities as “abortion deserts”
  • Socioeconomic outcomes of women who receive and women who are denied wanted abortions
  • When women have control over the timing of having children, the children benefit
• Facility regulation:
  • Admitting privileges laws do not appear to benefit abortion patients
  • Review of existing research indicates no difference in patient safety between outpatient procedures performed in ASCs vs physician’s offices
  • Abortion safety does not differ depending on facility type
  • State law approaches to facility regulation of abortion and other office interventions
• Policy:
  • California university students face barriers to accessing medication abortion off campus; it would be feasible for student health centers to provide care
  • State policies targeting alcohol use in pregnancy result in worse birth outcomes
• LGBTQ reproductive health care and inclusion:
  • Discriminatory treatment by providers and providers’ lack of LGBTQ health competency caused discomfort and prevented some LGBTQ-identified patients from receiving care relevant to their reproductive healthcare needs
  • New methods to include LGBTQ people in pregnancy risk research

Media articles featuring ANSIRH

In 2018, ANSIRH’s research was featured in over 330 media articles in a variety of outlets, including national, political, women, teen, health, and tech. A few highlights are listed below. Please see our website for a curated list of media articles.

• In these American cities, women must travel more than 100 miles for an abortion (MarketWatch)
• As Catholic hospitals expand, so do limits on some procedures (New York Times)
• Denial of abortion leads to economic hardship for low-income women (Reuters)
• Onerous laws exclusively target abortion clinics (Reuters)
• Evidence shaky for abortion reversal procedures (MedPage Today)
• Obtaining the abortion pill from pharmacies and online gains support among women (STAT)
• Who gets legal abortions in America? Mothers. (Fatherly)
• Abortion doesn't increase alcohol & drug use, new study finds, debunking another anti-choice myth (Romper)

Op-eds

In 2018 we placed 22 op-eds and one New York Times letter to the editor (LTE).

Titles and links to selected op-eds and the LTE are listed by author below. For a full list of ANSIRH's 2018 op-eds, contact Jason Harless.

• Daniel Grossman: American women should have access to abortion pills before they need them (Los Angeles Times), Health-care providers must consider what role we’ll play in harm reduction if abortion is outlawed (Rewire), California public universities should make abortion pill available to students (San Francisco Chronicle), Abortion is not a thought experiment (Huffington Post; with Renee Bracey Sherman), These birth control pills should be available without a prescription (Teen Vogue; with Kate Grindlay), A doctor's take on the medical science behind Iowa's abortion ban (PopSugar)
• Daniel Grossman and Antonia Biggs: With abortion clinic restrictions tightening, women want more access at home (Salon)
• Carole Joffe: Time to compromise on abortion? (New York Times LTE), With the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh, Roe v. Wade is likely dead (Washington Post), Title X facilities are already over-regulated (The Hill; with David S. Cohen)
• Diana Greene Foster: Restricting access to abortion makes poor women poorer (Los Angeles Times), Stop saying that making abortion illegal won’t stop people from having them (Rewire)
• Ushma Upadhyay: My turn: Provide college students with abortion access on campus (CalMatters)
• Lori Freedman: Opinion: How Trump’s decision puts women’s health at risk (San Jose Mercury News; with Jody Steinauer), 1 Important Question Women Should Be Asking About Their Hospital (PopSugar) 
• Sarah Roberts: Our research on abortion laws shows they are not based on facts and can even harm women (USA Today), We already know what America would look like if Roe is overturned (Sacramento Bee)
• Monica McLemore: Can only physicians provide abortions? in certain states, laws restrict care (Elite Daily)
• Gretchen Sisson: Women’s abortion stories are still underrepresented on TV (Salon)

Awards

In 2018, ANSIRH researchers received five of our field’s top awards.

Here is a list of the ANSIRH researchers and their colleagues who received these well-deserved awards. Please join us in congratulating them on their achievements.

• Diana Taylor, Ushma Upadhyay and Molly Battistelli, along with their colleagues Mary Fjerstad, Tracy Weitz, and Maureen Paul, received the 2018 Daniel R. Mishell Jr., MD, Outstanding Article Award from Contraception for the publication “Standardizing the classification of abortion incidents: the Procedural Abortion Incident Reporting and Surveillance (PAIRS) Framework.”
• Monica McLemore was named the Abortion Care Network (ACN) Person of the Year for 2018.
• The American Nurses Association-California awarded the 2018 Elizabeth “Betty” Curtis Award (see page 8) to Diana Taylor for her policy and political advocacy on behalf of improved sexual and reproductive health.
• Sarah Roberts, Ushma Upadhyay and Erin Wingo, along with their colleagues Nicole Johns and Valerie Williams, won the Best Scientific Poster award at the 2018 National Abortion Federation meeting (NAF) for their poster “What proportion of women do not get abortions when Medicaid does not cover abortion?”
• Antonia Biggs, Lauren Ralph, Sarah Raifman, Diana Greene Foster and Daniel Grossman won second place for their poster "Alternative models of medication abortion provision: Support and interest among a national sample of U.S. women" at the 2018 Society of Family Planning meeting.

Looking forward to 2019

In the coming year, ANSIRH will continue to produce rigorous research that documents the impact of restrictive policies, while we continue to test new strategies to increase access to services and improve people’s reproductive wellbeing. Here’s just a sampling of research projects with important policy implications that we are planning for the year ahead.

• Document U.S. women’s experiences with self-managed abortion, including their reasons, the methods they use, and clinical outcomes.
• Conduct an early assessment of the impact of a law in Louisiana that could close most or all of Louisiana’s abortion clinics.
• Explore the impact of banning the most common method of second-trimester abortion in Texas, if the law goes into effect.
• Continue to research the safety, effectiveness and acceptability of telemedicine provision of medication abortion, including simplified models of care with optional ultrasound and laboratory testing. The California Home Abortion by Telemedicine (CHAT) Study will be the first of its kind in the U.S. and aims to reduce barriers for people who face geographic, financial, and logistical barriers to obtaining timely abortion care.
• Explore how the potential for pharmacy dispensing of mifepristone, including via mail-order pharmacy, could change the provision of abortion in the future and improve access to care.
• Disseminate and explain our research on the potential for increased access to medication abortion on college campuses in California. Legislation may mandate the service to be provided at student health services, which would serve as a model for other states.
• Discover whether women can accurately determine their eligibility for medication abortion without the help of a clinician.

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