Annual Research Highlights 2022

Welcome to ANSIRH's accomplishments for 2022. We are proud to share our major achievements from the past year, including publications, media mentions, op-eds, legal activities, and other highlights.

Publications

In 2022, ANSIRH researchers contributed 75+ peer-reviewed publications to the field. These articles appeared in the most respected journals of reproductive health, psychology, public health, and beyond. Below is a list of links to summaries for selected 2022 publications. To access the full list of publications, visit our Research and Tools page and select Research Publications in the right-hand dropdown. 

• Abortion, post-Dobbs:

  • Clinicians and providers must prepare for impending abortion access crisis
  • Here’s what we can expect post-Dobbs, according to research
• Abortion facilities and cost:
  • The average out-of-pocket cost for medication abortion is increasing, new study confirms
  • An In-Depth Look at Abortion Facilities in the United States
• ​Pregnancy:
  • Expanded Screening Questions Resulted in Higher Accuracy in Self-Assessment Pregnancy Duration
  • What factors influence providers to report alcohol and drug use during pregnancy to health authorities, police, or CPS?
  • Mandatory warning signs for cannabis use during pregnancy do not provide public health benefit, study shows
• ​Medication Abortion:
  • Medication abortions without ultrasound are safe and effective, new study proves
  • Pharmacists support dispensing medication abortion
• ​Restrictions:
  • Why do women decide to get third-trimester abortions?
  • Distance of more than 50 miles to abortion facilities can be insurmountable barrier to access
  • Without access to facility-based abortion care, one in three people would consider self-managing their abortion

  • Unwanted disclosure of abortion decision may harm people’s mental health

​Media articles featuring ANSIRH

In 2022, ANSIRH’s media impact doubled from last year, with 480+ media hits – a significant number given the continued slowdown in reporting due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A few highlights are listed below. Please see our website for a curated list of media articles.

• Adoption Agencies vs. ‘Roe’: The Invisible Hand Stirring the Pot (Rewire News Group)
• What Happens to Women Who Are Denied Abortion? Here Are the Stats (Glamour)
• The Abortion Pill Is Safer Than Tylenol and Almost Impossible to Get (Bloomberg Businessweek)
• Most People Want Over-the-Counter Abortion Pills, New Study Finds (Ms. Magazine)
• Congress Must Decriminalize At Home Medication Abortion Now (Teen Vogue)
• California Doctors, Activists Rush to Provide Abortion Services Out of State if Roe Overturned (KQED)
• Being denied an abortion harms mental health more than getting one, research shows (The Today Show)
• Abortion Pills Are Used For Most U.S. Abortions. What Are They? (Science Friday)
• The landmark study that explores what happens to women denied abortions (MSNBC)
• How to Have a Medication Abortion (The Cut)
• Abortion Rights: Sharing Your Stories (Now Tonight with Joshua Johnson)
• How Overturning Roe V. Wade Can Impact The Economy (Forbes)
• The Most Important Study in the Abortion Debate (The Atlantic)
• The Problem With ‘Justifying’ Abortion Care (Huffington Post)
• More Than 200 Abortion Clinics Will Close If The Supreme Court Overturns Roe (Huffington Post)
• How abortion bans make inequality worse (Vox)
• The profound, long-lasting costs of banning abortion – a comic (The Guardian)
• The effects of overturning Roe v. Wade in seven simple charts (Nature)
• US abortion bans leave grey areas in complicated pregnancies (BBC News)
• Risking Everything to Offer Abortions Across State Lines (The New York Times)
• At least 66 clinics in 15 states have stopped providing abortions since Dobbs, analysis finds (NBC News)
• These Drugs Could Restore a Period before Pregnancy Is Confirmed (Scientific American)

​Op-eds

In 2022, ANSIRH research and expertise were featured in 42 opinion pieces, including op-eds by other authors in The Washington Post and Scientific American. Of these, ANSIRH researchers penned 20 op-eds. Titles and links for these are listed by author below.

• Andrea Becker: The “Abortion Pill” Is Used for So Much More Than Abortions (Slate), Men Have A Lot to Lose When Roe Falls (The New York Times)
• Antonia Biggs: As a psychologist, I fear the mental health problems we’ll see post-Roe (Los Angeles Times)
• Carole Joffe: Turning Pregnant Women and Doctors Into Criminals (The New York Times), 
  Failing to embed abortion care in mainstream medicine made it politically vulnerable (The Washington Post)
• Diana Greene Foster: How Being Denied an Abortion Affects Women (The New York Times), Six Predictions About the End of Roe, Based on Research (Politico), The Court is ignoring science (Science)
• Gretchen Sisson: Alito touted adoption as a silver lining for women denied abortions (The Washington Post)
• Katrina Kimport: What to know about the costs of traveling for abortion care in the US – here’s what I learned from talking to hundreds of women who’ve sought abortions and Less than 1% of abortions take place in the third trimester – here’s why people get them (The Conversation), We Need to Do More Than “Protect Roe” (The Nation)
• Lauren Ralph: When abortion at a clinic is not available, 1 in 3 pregnant people say they will do something on their own to end the pregnancy (The Conversation)
• Steph Herold: Hollywood’s Role in Stigmatizing Abortion (The American Prospect), From ‘Dirty Dancing’ to ‘Scandal,’ On-Screen Abortion Stories Carry Sway (The New York Times)
• Ushma Upadhyay: A Streamlined Model for Medication Abortion Access (Medpage Today), 
  Abortion pills are just as safe to prescribe based on a patient’s medical history as after an in-person exam, new research finds (The Conversation)

Legal and Policy Activities

After the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson to reverse the federal right to abortion care, ANSIRH’s work continued to resonate in policy, legal, and cultural debates. ANSIRH researchers and research were featured in a number of court hearings, legal proceedings, and congressional hearings in 2022:

• In May, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen cited Dr. Diana Greene Foster’s research on the economic impacts of abortion denial at a Senate Banking Committee meeting, saying: “Denying women access to abortion increases their odds of living in poverty or need for public assistance.”
• In April and June, Dr. Sarah Roberts testified at the CA Senate and CA Assembly Health Committees in support for SB2223, which protects people from being prosecuted for abortion or pregnancy loss.
• In June, Dr. Antonia Biggs provided expert testimony on mental health and abortion in support of a challenge to House Bill 5, a Florida ban on abortion after 15 weeks.
• In July, Representative Katie Porter featured the Turnaway Study in a whiteboard breakdown, during a hearing held by the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee.
• ANSIRH participated heavily in the California Future of Abortion Council (FAB), a coalition providing the legislature and governor with recommendations to make California a “reproductive freedom” state for those living in CA and those traveling to the state for care.  ANSIRH offered letters of support, written op-eds, and provided expert testimony for several bills that were signed into law:
  • AB 2223 which protects a pregnant person from who chooses to end a pregnancy from prosecution, even if the abortion is self-induced or happens outside of the medical system
  • AB 2626 which would prevent the state medical board from suspending or revoking the license of a physician who is punished in another state for performing an abortion;
  • SB 523 which would expand access to contraceptive and vasectomy services;
  • SB 1375 which would expand abortion provision by allowing qualified nurse; practitioners to perform first-trimester abortions without a supervising physician.

Other highlights from 2022

• Our researchers and staff received the following awards and recognitions in 2022:
  • For his outstanding service to the community, Dr. Daniel Grossman received the 2022 Chancellor Award for Public Service from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
  • For her outstanding dedication to the betterment of their staff and UCSF, Molly Battistelli, MPH, received the 2022 Chancellor Award for Exceptional University Management. 
  • Dr. Monica McLemore received the 2022 Society of Family Planning Mentor Award in recognition of demonstrated dedication to supporting and furthering the careers of a new generation of clinicians and scholars in the field of family planning.
  • For her dissertation, Dr. Andréa Becker won the Roberta G. Simmons Outstanding Dissertation Award from the American Sociological Association.
  • Leah Koenig, MSPH, and Isabel Muñoz, MPH, were announced as 2022 Emerging Scholars by the Society of Family Planning.
  • Dr. Foster was recognized by Nature as “10 people who helped shape science in 2022” for her leadership on the Turnaway study.
• Our researchers were featured in 32 radio shows, podcasts, and video interviews, including Dr. Foster appearing on BBC World Business Report, and Dr. Gretchen Sisson appearing on PBS, and Dr. Ushma Upadhyay featured as an expert for Science Friday. 

• Dr. Katrina Kimport published her book, No Real Choice: How culture and politics matter for reproductive autonomy, which looks at how abortion restrictions, class and racial disparities, cultural pressure, and other issues impact a woman’s ability to choose - from the perspective of women who considered, but did not choose abortion.

• ANSIRH released a report in June, Trends in Abortion Care in the United States, 2017-2021, which provides an overview of the abortion facility landscape and services available across the United States from 2017 through 2021. This report has been a major resource for reporters and researchers seeking aggregated state and regional data on abortion care over the past five years.

• Five new staff members joined ANSIRH in 2022: Jessica Barnes, MSW, Project Director for the End of Roe Study; Dr. Maryani Palupy Rasidjan and Dr. Andréa Becker, Postdoctoral Fellows at ANSIRH; Alex Schulte, BSPH, Data Analyst supporting work led by Dr. Sarah Roberts; and Dr. Josie Urbina, Research Fellow at ANSIRH.

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