ANSIRH research

In 2017, abortion in Chile was decriminalized. Now women can legally access abortion in cases of rape, lethal fetal anomaly, and to preserve a woman’s life.

This study is assessing whether future women’s health professionals in Chile welcome or are prepared for this legal change. A better understanding of their attitudes about and willingness to provide abortion is critical to identifying reproductive health training needs and the barriers that would need to be overcome if abortion were liberalized in Chile. 

ANSIRH’s Evaluation of Restrictions Project aims to examine the effects on women of state-level abortion restrictions and to identify strategies to mitigate the negative impacts. The project started in 2013 and has so far conducted research in ten states and evaluated the effects of a variety of restrictions. We continue to identify states and restrictions to evaluate.

Despite their enormous and trusted role in health care, nurses are often unprepared to care for the woman with an unintended pregnancy who want to seek abortion. This leads to staffing shortages that prevent women’s access to abortion care, and a lost opportunity for nurses to serve as a trusted health resource for women seeking abortion.

Nearly half of the countries with liberal or liberally interpreted abortion laws had public funding for abortion, including most countries that liberalized their abortion law in the past 20 years. Outliers remain, however, including among developed countries where access to abortion may be limited due to affordability.

ANSIRH’s work in Reproductive Autonomy investigates women’s power to control matters regarding contraceptive use, pregnancy, abortion, and childbearing.  Our research is done in the U.S. and internationally and involves measurement development, social science research, and literature reviews.

About 75% of religious hospitals are Catholic. Catholic facilities adhere to the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Healthcare Services which prohibit abortion, contraception (including tubal-ligation), infertility treatment and more.  Catholic hospitals treat 1 out of 9 acute care patients in the United States.

The practice of telemedicine—accessing care remotely from a doctor or nurse via phone or teleconference to address a health need—is a rapidly growing segment of the healthcare landscape.  Forbes recently called it a “game-changer for patients.”

The Turnaway Study is a prospective longitudinal study examining the mental health, physical health, and socioeconomic consequences of receiving an abortion compared to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term. From 2008 to 2010, we recruited from 30 abortion facilities around the country to recruit about 1,000 women who sought abortions, some who received abortions because they presented for care under the gestational limit of the clinic and some who were “turned away” and carried to term because they were past the gestational limit.