Thomas RG, et al. – This study is performed to quantify the prevalence of believing that abortion ought to be illegal in all or most cases among women obtaining an abortion in the U.S. and to distinguish correlates of holding this belief. Abortion patients who do not believe abortion ought to be legal seem to vary substantially from women who are more supportive of legality. Outcomes raise important questions about this subset of patients, including whether possible discordance between patient beliefs and behavior could impact their utilization of medical abortion or other products.

Methods

• For this research, the study population was drawn from the nationally–representative 2008 Abortion Patient Survey.
• The primary outcome was having an anti–legal abortion attitude, characterized as agreeing that abortion ought to be illegal in all or most cases.
• They evaluated potential correlates in bi–variable and multivariable investigations utilizing weights to account for the complex sampling.

Results

• In this study, a sum of 4769 abortion patients completed the survey module containing the question on abortion legality.
• Out of 4769, 4492 (94.2%) had non–missing data for the outcome.
• Overall, 4.1% of patients (N=183) reported an anti–legal abortion attitude.
• Correlates of having anti–legal attitude included being married, at<200% federal poverty level, fundamentalist, contraception non–use, no abortion history, perceiving the pregnancy with ambivalence or as unintended, and utilizing misoprostol or another product on their own to bring back their period or end the pregnancy.