Does information about abortion safety affect Texas voters' opinions about restrictive laws? A randomized study

Abstract

Objective To assess whether information about abortion safety and awareness of abortion laws affect voters’ opinions about medically unnecessary abortion regulations. Study design Between May and June 2016, we randomized 1,200 Texas voters to receive or not receive information describing the safety of office-based abortion care during an online survey about abortion laws using simple random assignment. We compared the association between receiving safety information and awareness of recent restrictions and beliefs that ambulatory surgical center (ASC) requirements for abortion facilities and hospital admitting privileges requirements for physicians would make abortion safer. We used Poisson regression, adjusting for political affiliation and views on abortion. Results Of 1,200 surveyed participants, 1,183 had complete data for analysis: 612 in the information group and 571 in the comparison group. Overall, 259 (46%) in the information group and 298 (56%) in the comparison group believed the ASC requirement would improve abortion safety (p=.008); 230 (41%) in the information group and 285 (54%) in the comparison group believed admitting privileges would make abortion safer (p<.001). After multivariable adjustment, the information group was less likely to report the ASC (Prevalence Ratio [PR]: 0.82; 95% CI: 0.72–0.94) and admitting privileges requirements (PR: 0.76; 95% CI: 0.65–0.88) would improve safety. Participants who identified as conservative Republicans were more likely to report that the ASC (82%) and admitting privileges requirements (83%) would make abortion safer if they had heard of the provisions than if they were unaware of them (ASC: 52%; admitting privileges: 47%; all p<.001). Conclusions Informational statements reduced perceptions that restrictive laws make abortion safer. Voters’ prior awareness of the requirements also was associated with their beliefs. Implications Informational messages can shift scientifically unfounded views about abortion safety and could reduce support for restrictive laws. Because prior awareness of abortion laws does not ensure accurate knowledge about their effects on safety, it is important to reach a broad audience through early dissemination of information about new regulations.

Women's knowledge of their state's abortion regulations. A national survey

“…When considering women's understanding about the safety of abortion and impact on health, inaccurate anti-abortion messaging and poor sexual health knowledge appears to outweigh abundant and compelling contrary evidence [1,22,24,25,[27][28][29][30][31]. We found respondents to be highly misinformed on abortion safety, consistent with prior studies [8][9][10]19]. While the risk of death from childbirth is 14 times that of death from abortion [22], respondents in our study were more likely to view childbirth as safer than abortion.…”

“…Personal ideology has previously been noted to be associated with support for abortion laws [9,19] and the belief that those restrictions enhance safety [19]. Respondents' moral views on abortion were similar to prior studies [10,19,26]. We found personal and state of residence hostility toward abortion to be correlated with low knowledge of abortion laws.…”

“…We included one item to measure women's personal views on abortion [10,19]. We asked the question: ''Which of the following statements about the issue of abortion comes closest to your own view?"…”

Efficacy of interventions to improve public support for evidence based public health and climate change policy measures: a systematic review.

“…The PRISMA diagram in Figure 1 outlines the data collection steps leading to the inclusion of 16 papers in the review (12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27). Table 1 provides an overview of the intervention and design characteristics of each included study.…”

“…Inoculation theory informed studies directly involved attention to salience of the policy issue, as did framing theory based studies which intrinsically involve efforts to in uence the salience of particular issues within a given policy area. For example, some studies highlighted the importance of changing salience of beliefs about soda companies/industry (20), or the ways the food industry engineers its products to promote overconsumption (24), or the salience of issues which members of the public may feel strongly about, such as provision of abortion care in Conservative US states (27).…”