Abortion pills on TV: An exploratory study of the associations between abortion plotline viewership and beliefs regarding in-clinic and self-managed medication abortion.

Objectives: Entertainment television is an influential source of health information, including about reproductive health. We investigated the association between exposure to television plotlines about medication abortion on audience awareness and beliefs about medication abortion.

Study Design: We administered a national cross-sectional online survey from December 2021 to January 2022 with a probability-based sample of people assigned female at birth.

'I could see myself doing something like that': US women's engagement with characters who experience abortion, adoption and surrogacy on .

Building on existing scholarship examining how audiences interpret reproductive experiences on film and television, we investigate how viewers make meaning of representations of motherhood, abortion, adoption, and surrogacy on the Hulu television miniseries . We recruited twenty-one participants to watch the series and conducted three virtual focus groups of seven women each. Based on the racial identities of the main characters in the series, we segmented these groups by race: one group each of white women, Black women, and Chinese American women.

Who are the women who relinquish infants for adoption? Domestic adoption and contemporary birth motherhood in the United States.

Introduction: The social context of pregnancy decision-making has changed in recent decades in the United States (US), but little research has examined how these changes manifest in the context of infant adoption.

Methods: To create an updated profile of US birth mothers, this analysis uses demographic data collected and aggregated from six adoption agencies, with information on 8658 private adoptions that occurred between 2011 and 2020.

Results: Based on this sample, birth mothers today are older and more racially and ethnically diverse than counterparts in previous generations; a majority have other had children and a substantial proportion were parenting other children at the time of relinquishment.

Prime-time abortion on Grey's Anatomy: What do US viewers learn from fictional portrayals of abortion on television?

Context: Entertainment television can impact viewers' knowledge, attitudes, and reproductive health behaviors, yet little research has examined the impact of scripted abortion plotlines on viewers' abortion knowledge or social supportiveness for those having abortions. We examined the impact of an abortion storyline from Grey's Anatomy on US-based viewers.

Method: We conducted an online survey of likely Grey's Anatomy viewers prior to the episode's airing, assessing abortion ideology, knowledge, and support.

Estimating the annual domestic adoption rate and lifetime incidence of infant relinquishment in the United States.

Objectives: Estimating the rate of infant relinquishment for adoption in the United States (U.S.) can inform understandings of pregnancy decision-making and adoption practice.

Abortion on American television: An update on recent portrayals, 2015-2019.

Objective: To compare differences in televised abortion depictions from two time periods: 2005 to 2014, as examined in previous studies, and more recent depictions from 2015 to 2019.

Study Design: Using a database of television abortion plotlines, we analyzed recent portrayals for character demographics, barriers, genre, and safety, calculated proportions, and compared to prior findings.

Results: While recent portrayals shift towards reflecting some demographics of U.

Abortion Providers on Politically Engaging Patients.

Background: For decades, abortion providers have lamented the lack of patients' voices in the abortion rights movement. Given the millions of women who have received abortions, the absence of this large constituency, providers assert, has been politically costly. Underlying this disappointment is a parallel question that reflects a philosophical divide among abortion providers: are attempts to politically engage abortion patients a desired or appropriate element of care?

Methods: We interviewed providers from 14 abortion clinics, representing a range of approaches to care, patient volume, and geographic locations.

Hangers, Potions, and Pills: Abortion Procedures on American Television, 2008 to 2018.

Background: Television portrayals of medical procedures may contribute to patient anxieties and cultural myths. We explored how television depicts abortion procedures, focusing on what these portrayals communicate about abortion access and safety.

Methods: Researchers identified all abortion procedure plotlines on American television from 2008 to 2018 through Internet searches.

"The stakes are so high": interviews with progressive journalists reporting on abortion.

Objectives: Because news frames can influence public and policy agendas, proponents of abortion access should be concerned with how this issue is covered in the news. While previous research has examined the content of news on abortion, this analysis explores the process of newsmaking on abortion, examining how journalists understand their role in and experience of covering abortion.

Study Design: We recruited journalists with experience reporting on abortion through listservs for progressive and feminist reporters.

"I was close to death!": abortion and medical risk on American television, 2005-2016.

Objectives: To examine the portrayal of complications and long-term health consequences associated with abortion on television, recognizing the impact that fictional stories can have on public beliefs about abortion's safety.

Study Design: Using a systematic online search, we identified all instances of abortion on US television from 2005 to 2016. We qualitatively coded these plotlines to identify any occurrences of complications, interventions or long-term health consequences associated with abortion care, with 95% intercoder reliability.

Adoption Decision Making among Women Seeking Abortion.

Background: Little is known about how adoption factors into pregnancy decision making, particularly when abortion is unavailable.

Methods: We used data from the Turnaway Study, a longitudinal study of 956 women seeking abortion, including 231 women denied abortions owing to gestational limits. Through semiannual quantitative interviews, we assessed the frequency with which women denied abortion consider and choose adoption, and, among adoption participants, decision satisfaction.

Doctors and Witches, Conscience and Violence: Abortion Provision on American Television.

Context: Popular entertainment may reflect and produce-as well as potentially contest-stigma regarding abortion provision. Knowledge of how providers are portrayed on-screen is needed to improve understanding of how depictions may contribute to the stigmatization of real providers.

Methods: All abortion provision plotlines on American television from 2005 to 2014 were identified through Internet searches.

After After Tiller: the impact of a documentary film on understandings of third-trimester abortion.

Onscreen pseudo-experiences have been shown to influence public perceptions of contested social issues. However, research has not considered whether such experiences have limits in their influence and/or vary in their impact. Using the case of third-trimester abortion, an issue subject to high amounts of misinformation, low public support and low occurrence in the general population, we investigate how the pseudo-experience of viewing After Tiller, a documentary film showing stories of third-trimester abortion, providers and patients, might serve as a counterpoint to misinformation and myth.

Facts and fictions: Characters seeking abortion on American television, 2005-2014.

Objectives: We aim to describe how women who seek abortions are portrayed on television, recognizing that onscreen fictional stories can shape the public's beliefs.

Study Design: Drawing on a comprehensive online search, we identified all fictional representations of abortion decision making on U.S.

"Choosing Life": Birth Mothers on Abortion and Reproductive Choice.

Purpose: As the least-chosen option when faced with an unplanned pregnancy, adoption remains largely unexamined as a reproductive choice. Although the anti-abortion movement promotes adoption as its preferred alternative to abortion, little is known of birth mothers' pregnancy decision making and whether adoption was chosen in lieu of abortion.

Methods: I conducted in-depth interviews with 40 women who had placed infants for adoption from 1962 to 2009.

Telling stories about abortion: abortion-related plots in American film and television, 1916-2013.

Objectives: Popular discourse on abortion in film and television assumes that abortions are under- and misrepresented. Research indicates that such representations influence public perception of abortion care and may play a role in the production of social myths around abortion, with consequences for women's experience of abortion. To date, abortion plotlines in American film and television have not been systematically tracked and analyzed.