PRO-CHOICE? SOCIAL AND LEGAL CONSTRICTIONS UPON WOMEN’S ABILITY TO CHOOSE MEDICATION ABORTION
type: CreativeWork
description: Unintended pregnancies resulted in $21 billion in avoidable health care costs in the United States as of the most recently available data in 2010 and are associated with myriad negative health effects for mothers and children. They disparately impact vulnerable groups of women, such as those 18-29 years old, Black women, low-income women, single women, and less educated women. A medication abortion is one method of terminating a pregnancy which is over 95% effective, safe (with major adverse events in less than 0.5% of cases), has minor side effects, and costs less than 20% of a live birth.However, states have different levels of medication abortion utilization: in 2020, percentages ranged from 13.7% in Missouri to 96.6% in Wyoming in 2020. The FDA’s abortifacient protocol is more restrictive than medically necessary to ensure women’s safety. For example, although the FDA expanded medication abortions for use up to ten weeks of gestation in 2016 from the previous seven-week limit, studies show safety and efficacy beyond ten weeks of gestation. Many states have laws which restrict access to medication abortions beyond their laws that restrict access to all abortions. Additionally, many states have laws that regulate access to medication abortions more strictly than the FDA. These laws can result in a delay in obtaining abortion care, possibly past the FDA’s ten-week limit for medication abortions, which could make the patient ineligible for a medication abortion in some states. A state’s percentage of medication abortion utilization may depend upon which law(s) that state has in place restricting access. This is the first study to examine that relationship. There is a gap in the literature as to why medication abortion is underutilized given that a majority of abortions occur within the FDA’s ten-week time limit and that the majority of women who received an abortion would have preferred to receive it earlier than they did. The goal of this dissertation is to examine…
abstract: Unintended pregnancies resulted in $21 billion in avoidable health care costs in the United States as of the most recently available data in 2010 and are associated with myriad negative health effects for mothers and children. They disparately impact vulnerable groups of women, such as those 18-29 years old, Black women, low-income women, single women, and less educated women. A medication abortion is one method of terminating a pregnancy which is over 95% effective, safe (with major adverse events in less than 0.5% of cases), has minor side effects, and costs less than 20% of a live birth.However, states have different levels of medication abortion utilization: in 2020, percentages ranged from 13.7% in Missouri to 96.6% in Wyoming in 2020. The FDA’s abortifacient protocol is more restrictive than medically necessary to ensure women’s safety. For example, although the FDA expanded medication abortions for use up to ten weeks of gestation in 2016 from the previous seven-week limit, studies show safety and efficacy beyond ten weeks of gestation. Many states have laws which restrict access to medication abortions beyond their laws that restrict access to all abortions. Additionally, many states have laws that regulate access to medication abortions more strictly than the FDA. These laws can result in a delay in obtaining abortion care, possibly past the FDA’s ten-week limit for medication abortions, which could make the patient ineligible for a medication abortion in some states. A state’s percentage of medication abortion utilization may depend upon which law(s) that state has in place restricting access. This is the first study to examine that relationship. There is a gap in the literature as to why medication abortion is underutilized given that a majority of abortions occur within the FDA’s ten-week time limit and that the majority of women who received an abortion would have preferred to receive it earlier than they did. The goal of this dissertation is to examine…
author: Keaton, Sarah
language: eng
keywords: Public health, Abortion access, Legal epidemiology, Medication abortion, Multiple imputation of data, Policy surveillance, Reproductive rights
license: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
date published: 2023
date modified: 2026-07-27T21:21:50Z
provider: Temple University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Temple University. Libraries

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12613/8594