Amplifying the voices of marginalized adolescents on the perceived impact of a post-Roe landscape: A mixed methods study
Abortion
Awarded 2022
Inequities in abortion access
Bianca Allison, MD, MPH
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
$50,000

Limitations on access to abortion in the United States will have specific and differential impacts on adolescents under age 18. Adolescents are more likely than adults to experience unplanned pregnancy and to have pregnancy end in abortion. A federal ruling that overturns or modifies the Roe v. Wade decision will likely result in people traveling to other states to seek abortion care and also increase demand for effective contraception. However, access to both abortion and contraception are more difficult for adolescents, who may not be able to travel to or pay for critical reproductive health services. There is an urgent need to examine how the Supreme Court ruling will impact adolescents—particularly adolescents of color who face long-standing structural inequities in reproductive health care and outcomes—to inform the design of post-Roe access solutions and policy initiatives that center the needs of marginalized youth. We will partner with the MyVoice project in administering and analyzing a three-wave longitudinal open- ended survey in the months preceding and following the Supreme Court ruling. We will use a convergent parallel mixed methods design to describe how a national sample of adolescents (aged 14-17 years) views the changing state and federal abortion laws, and how changes in these laws will impact them. The results of this study will generate a list of priority areas for researchers, advocates, and policymakers to develop targeted interventions that will improve adolescent knowledge about abortion and streamline access to essential reproductive health services in a post-Roe landscape.