Preferences for self-managed medication abortion among individuals in the Southeastern US
Abortion
Awarded 2023
Self-managed abortion, post-Dobbs
Hannah Leslie, PhD, MPH
University of California, San Francisco
$50,000

Self-managed medication abortion (SMMA) is rapidly becoming a major (and in some cases the only) option for those seeking abortion in states with abortion bans; requests for SMMA in the Southeastern US have increased rapidly since Roe v Wade was overturned. Qualitative research has identified facilitators and barriers to SMMA, but quantitative evidence on how individuals would prefer to access SMMA is lacking. We propose to extend our current study quantifying preferences for SMMA among a community-based sample in Mississippi to reach respondents throughout the Southeast. We will leverage the discrete choice experiment (DCE) we are designing through formative qualitative research and engagement of a Mississippi-based advisory board and implement the DCE among a larger sample of participants recruited online in Mississippi and in neighboring states characterized by high poverty and highly restrictive abortion policies: Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana. We will adapt the DCE for online administration throughout the region and employ social media marketing to recruit 500 individuals potentially in need of abortion services for a brief survey containing the DCE. A larger, more geographically diverse sample from the Southeastern United States will bolster our planned analyses in which we will quantify relative preferences for each attribute level (eg, cost versus access point), calculate willingness to pay for given levels of each attribute, and identify distinct subsets of preferences using latent class analysis.