ANSIRH research
ANSIRH research: Abortion
Half of pregnancies in the United States are considered unintended (unwanted or mistimed), and at least half of unintended pregnancies are carried to term. Although unintended pregnancy is extremely common, evidence about how unintended pregnancy affects women’s lives is surprisingly limited.
Read more...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.
Read more...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.
Read more...On January 1, 2014, California enacted legislation (AB 154) culminating a decade worth of work to expand the pool of safe, qualified professionals authorized to provide early abortion care.
Read more...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.
Read more...Over 70% 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 6 acute care patients in the United States.
Read more...ANSIRH’s Primary Care Initiative (PCI) aims to expand access to early abortion care by integrating sexual and reproductive health care within primary health care. To advance this goal, PCI projects focus on translating evidence into health care practice and policy.
Read more...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.
Read more...The Public Health Approaches to Abortion project is a series of projects that aim to ground the public and policy debate about abortion regulation and access in scientific evidence and public health principles. Collectively, these projects serve to re-center scientific evidence and public health professional expertise in discussions of abortion patient safety and health department engagement with abortion.
Read more...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.
Read more...Because of the provisions of the Hyde Amendment, a federal law that prohibits federal funding from being used for abortion care except in the case of rape, incest or life endangerment, the hundreds of thousands of women serving in the U.S. military face unique barriers to accessing care.
Read more...Since 2010, restrictions passed by state legislatures may have affected millions of women and caused at least 70 abortion providing facilities to close. ANSIRH’s Evaluation of Abortion Restrictions project is examining how abortion laws affect women’s access to and experience with abortion.
Read more...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.”
Read more...The “November Gang” is an important, but little known, grouping within the world of abortion provision. This group, which met for the first time in November 1989, and continues to meet to this day, was initially summoned by Charlotte Taft, then the director of a clinic in Texas, and Sandra Bagley, the director of a clinic in Utah.
Read more...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.
Read more...Ultrasound in the context of abortion care has received more attention in recent years as states have passed regulations mandating specific ultrasound procedures. Already 23 states have enacted such laws, requiring abortion providers to perform ultrasounds and/or offer fetal images and heart tone sounds to patients.
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