IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0226004.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Complex situations: Economic insecurity, mental health, and substance use among pregnant women who consider – but do not have – abortions

Author

Listed:
  • Sarah C M Roberts
  • Nancy F Berglas
  • Katrina Kimport

Abstract

We examine characteristics and experiences of women who considered, but did not have, an abortion for this pregnancy. Participants were recruited at prenatal care clinics in Louisiana and Maryland for a mixed-methods study (N = 589). On self-administered surveys and structured interviews, participants were asked if they had considered abortion for this pregnancy and, if so, reasons they did not obtain one. A subset (n = 83), including participants who considered abortion for this pregnancy, completed in-depth phone interviews. Multivariable logistic regression analyses examined characteristics associated with having considered abortion and experiencing a policy-related barrier to having an abortion; analyses focused on economic insecurity and of mental health/substance use as main predictors of interest. Louisiana interviews (n = 43) were analyzed using modified grounded theory to understand concrete experiences of policy-related factors. In regression analyses, women who reported greater economic insecurity (aOR 1.21 [95% CI 1.17, 1.26]) and more mental health diagnoses/substance use (aOR 1.29 [1.16, 1.45] had higher odds of having considered abortion. Those who reported greater economic insecurity (aOR 1.50 [1.09, 2.08]) and more mental health diagnoses/substance use (aOR 1.45 [95% CI 1.03, 2.05] had higher odds of reporting policy-related barriers. Interviewees who considered abortion and were subject to multiple restrictions on abortion identified material and instrumental impacts of policies that, collectively, contributed to them not having an abortion. Many described simultaneously navigating economic insecurity, mental health disorders, substance use, and interpersonal opposition to abortion from family and the man involved in the pregnancy. Current restrictive abortion policies appear to have more of an impact on women who report greater economic insecurity and more mental health diagnoses/substance use. These policies work in concert with each other, with people’s individual complex situations–including economic insecurity, mental health, and substance use–and with anti-abortion attitudes of other people to make abortion care impossible for some pregnant women to access.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah C M Roberts & Nancy F Berglas & Katrina Kimport, 2020. "Complex situations: Economic insecurity, mental health, and substance use among pregnant women who consider – but do not have – abortions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(1), pages 1-16, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0226004
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0226004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0226004
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0226004&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0226004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Upadhyay, U.D. & Weitz, T.A. & Jones, R.K. & Barar, R.E. & Foster, D.G., 2014. "Denial of abortion because of provider gestational age limits in the United States," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 104(9), pages 1687-1694.
    2. Foster, D.G. & Biggs, M.A. & Ralph, L. & Gerdts, C. & Roberts, S. & Glymour, M.M., 2018. "Socioeconomic outcomes of women who receive and women who are denied wanted abortions in the United States," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 108(3), pages 407-413.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jenny A. Higgins & Madison Lands & Taryn M. Valley & Emma Carpenter & Laura Jacques, 2021. "Real-Time Effects of Payer Restrictions on Reproductive Healthcare: A Qualitative Analysis of Cost-Related Barriers and Their Consequences among U.S. Abortion Seekers on Reddit," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(17), pages 1-11, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dickey, Madison S. & Mosley, Elizabeth A. & Clark, Elizabeth A. & Cordes, Sarah & Lathrop, Eva & Haddad, Lisa B., 2022. "“They're forcing people to have children that they can't afford”: a qualitative study of social support and capital among individuals receiving an abortion in Georgia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 315(C).
    2. Rocca, Corinne H. & Moseson, Heidi & Gould, Heather & Foster, Diana G. & Kimport, Katrina, 2021. "Emotions over five years after denial of abortion in the United States: Contextualizing the effects of abortion denial on women's health and lives," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 269(C).
    3. Caterina Muratori, 2021. "The Impact of Abortion Access on Violence Against Women," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2021-03, Department of Economics, University of Reading.
    4. Whitney S. Rice & Katie Labgold & Quita Tinsley Peterson & Megan Higdon & Oriaku Njoku, 2021. "Sociodemographic and Service Use Characteristics of Abortion Fund Cases from Six States in the U.S. Southeast," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(7), pages 1-16, April.
    5. Na Wang & Debra K. Creedy & Mingna Zhang & Hong Lu & Elizabeth Elder & Jyai Allen & Li Guo & Qian Xiao & Jenny Gamble, 2022. "Designing a Needs-Oriented Psychological Intervention for Chinese Women Undergoing an Abortion," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(1), pages 1-12, December.
    6. Altındağ, Onur & Joyce, Theodore, 2022. "Another day, another visit: Impact of Arkansas’ mandatory waiting period for women seeking an abortion by demographic groups," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    7. Polina Zvavitch & Michael S. Rendall & Constanza Hurtado-Acuna & Rachel M. Shattuck, 2021. "Contraceptive Consistency and Poverty After Birth," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 40(6), pages 1277-1311, December.
    8. Jones, Kelly M. & Pineda-Torres, Mayra, 2024. "TRAP’d Teens: Impacts of abortion provider regulations on fertility & education," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).
    9. Gábor Hajdu & Tamás Hajdu, 2021. "The long-term impact of restricted access to abortion on children’s socioeconomic outcomes," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(3), pages 1-14, March.
    10. Pleasants, Elizabeth & Parham, Lindsay & Weidert, Karen & Anderson, Emma & Dolgins, Eliza & Prata, Ndola & Upadhyay, Ushma D. & Marshall, Cassondra, 2024. "Waiting to start abortion: A qualitative exploration of narratives of waiting shared in a Reddit community for abortion post-Dobbs leak in 2022," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 349(C).
    11. Sarah C.M. Roberts, 2019. "The Presence and Consequences of Abortion Aversion in Scientific Research Related to Alcohol Use during Pregnancy," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(16), pages 1-10, August.
    12. Sarah Miller & Laura R. Wherry & Diana Greene Foster, 2023. "The Economic Consequences of Being Denied an Abortion," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 15(1), pages 394-437, February.
    13. Ernestina Coast & Samantha R Lattof & Yana van der Meulen Rodgers & Brittany Moore & Cheri Poss, 2021. "The microeconomics of abortion: A scoping review and analysis of the economic consequences for abortion care-seekers," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(6), pages 1-21, June.
    14. Nina Brooks & Tom Zohar, 2021. "Out of Labor and Into the Labor Force? The Role of Abortion Access, Social Stigma, and Financial Constraints," Working Papers wp2021_2111, CEMFI.
    15. Jill Barr-Walker & Ruvani T Jayaweera & Ana Maria Ramirez & Caitlin Gerdts, 2019. "Experiences of women who travel for abortion: A mixed methods systematic review," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(4), pages 1-26, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0226004. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.