Attitudes and Decision Making Among Women Seeking Abortions at One U.S. Clinic

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Abstract

Various restrictions on abortion have been imposed under the pretense that women may be uninformed, undecided or coerced in regard to their decision to terminate a pregnancy. Understanding whether certain women are at risk of low confidence in their abortion decision is useful for providing client-centered care and allocating counseling time to women with the greatest needs.

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Most cited references 24

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Abortion as stigma: cognitive and emotional implications of concealment.

Brenda Major, Richard Gramzow (1999)

This study examined the stigma of abortion and psychological implications of concealment among 442 women followed for 2 years from the day of their abortion. As predicted, women who felt stigmatized by abortion were more likely to feel a need to keep it a secret from family and friends. Secrecy was related positively to suppressing thoughts of the abortion and negatively to disclosing abortion-related emotions to others. Greater thought suppression was associated with experiencing more intrusive thoughts of the abortion. Both suppression and intrusive thoughts, in turn, were positively related to increases in psychological distress over time. Emotional disclosure moderated the association between intrusive thoughts and distress. Disclosure was associated with decreases in distress among women experiencing intrusive thoughts of their abortion, but was unrelated to distress among women not experiencing intrusive thoughts.

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Perceived social support, self-efficacy, and adjustment to abortion.

Brenda Major, Catherine Cozzarelli, Anne Sciacchitano … (1990)

Prior to their having a 1st trimester abortion, women's perceptions of social support from their partner, family, and friends and self-efficacy for coping were assessed. Depression, mood, physical complaints, and anticipation of negative consequences were measured after the 30-min recovery period. As predicted, perceived social support enhanced adjustment indirectly through its effects on self-efficacy. Women who perceived high support from their family, friends, and partners had higher self-efficacy for coping. Higher self-efficacy, in turn, predicted better adjustment on the psychological measures but not on the physical complaint measure. No direct path between social support and adjustment was observed. In addition, women who told close others of their abortion but perceived them as less than completely supportive had poorer postabortion psychological adjustment than either women who did not tell or women who told and perceived complete support.

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Timing of steps and reasons for delays in obtaining abortions in the United States.

Kerryn Moore, Lawrence Finer, Amanda L Dauphinee … (2006)

We studied the steps in the process of obtaining abortions and women's reported delays in order to help understand difficulties in accessing abortion services. In 2004, a structured survey was completed by 1209 abortion patients at 11 large providers, and in-depth interviews were conducted with 38 women at four sites. The median time from the last menstrual period to suspecting pregnancy was 33 days; the median time from suspecting pregnancy to confirming the pregnancy was 4 days; the median time from confirming the pregnancy to deciding to have an abortion was 0 day; the median time from deciding to have an abortion to first attempting to obtain abortion services was 2 days; and the median time from first attempting to obtain abortion services to obtaining the abortion was 7 days. Minors took a week longer to suspect pregnancy than adults did. Fifty-eight percent of women reported that they would have liked to have had the abortion earlier. The most common reasons for delay were that it took a long time to make arrangements (59%), to decide (39%) and to find out about the pregnancy (36%). Poor women were about twice as likely to be delayed by difficulties in making arrangements. Financial limitations and lack of knowledge about pregnancy may make it more difficult for some women to obtain early abortion.