Giving Compass' Take:
- Jasmine Mithani examines the existing gaps in abortion data collection and how these will likely become more glaring post-Dobbs.
- Why is it important to have accurate data on pregnancy and abortion? How can this data be utilized to help those seeking abortions?
- Learn about fighting abortion misinformation.
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Collecting abortion data has always been difficult: People are often unwilling to share their experiences with researchers, and the United States has no centralized count of abortions performed. Every state collects data differently, and some refuse to share it with federal researchers due to privacy concerns. Sometimes researchers have to estimate abortion incidence based on historical trends because up-to-date data isn’t available.
It’s a challenge with broad implications for information on reproductive health, one that has been compounded by the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which allowed states to ban abortion. Less accurate abortion data means less information to share with policymakers about the impacts of restrictions — but also spills over into many areas of public health.
Abortion data is a key supplement to studies involving the rate of pregnancies. Incomplete data on abortions could lead to less accurate calculations on the failure rates of various contraceptives and less knowledge about who gets pregnant. It could also lead to less information about the kind of reproductive support people need.
There are two long-running major national abortion data-gathering efforts in the United States: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Abortion Surveillance Report, which began collecting data in 1969, and the Guttmacher Institute’s Abortion Provider Survey, which began data collection in 1973. Additionally a pop-up survey launched in April 2022 by the Society for Family Planning, called WeCount, is expected to provide abortion data through one year after the Dobbs verdict.
With these three surveys, the major trade-off is whether researchers want timely data or demographically rich data. WeCount tracks abortions in each state every month, but that’s the only information the researchers collect from facilities. The CDC and Guttmacher gather that information — plus valuable demographic data including patients’ ages or race as well as what type of abortions were provided.
Isaac Maddow-Zimet, senior research associate at the Guttmacher Institute, explained that the reason there are so few data sources is because it is incredibly difficult to ask people about abortion directly. Regardless of whether surveys are conducted in-person or online, many people do not report that they have had an abortion.
The organizations gather data in significantly different ways, but all three rely on data from facilities versus individuals. Guttmacher has compared nationally representative surveys asking people if they have had abortions to the numbers reported in its Abortion Provider Census.
Read the full article about accurate abortion data by Jasmine Mithani at The 19th.