ArticleContraception2020
Women's knowledge of their state's abortion regulations. A national survey.
Article in Contraception, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Contraception and abortion misinformation among crisis pregnancy center attendees and non-attendees.Contraception · 2026Article
- Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers Laws and Pregnancies Conceived Through Fertility Treatment.JAMA health forum · 2026Article
- Impacts of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Misinformation in Digital Spaces on Human Rights Protection and Promotion: Scoping Review.JMIR infodemiology · 2025Article
- Patient Preferences for Provider Specialization for Induced Abortion and Miscarriage Care.Journal of women's health (2002) · 2025Article
- Imagining Coat-Hangers and Pills: A Qualitative Exploration of Abortion Beliefs and Attitudes in Hostile Policy Contexts in the United States.Perspectives on sexual and reproductive health · 2025Article
- Understanding abortion legality and trimester of abortion care in Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky, three abortion-restrictive states.Perspectives on sexual and reproductive health · 2024Article
- Article
- Knowledge of the abortion law and key legal issues of sexual and reproductive health and rights among recently arrived migrants in Sweden: a cross-sectional survey.BMC public health · 2023Article
- Differences in abortion-related knowledge among women involved in the criminal legal system in three US cities.Contraception · 2021Article
- Countering Misinformation About Abortion: The Role of Health Sciences Librarians.American journal of public health · 2021Article
- Abortion Knowledge Among Advanced Practice Clinicians in Colorado.Women's health issues : official publication of the Jacobs Institute of Women's HealthArticle
- Comparing Website Identification for Crisis Pregnancy Centers and Abortion Clinics.Women's health issues : official publication of the Jacobs Institute of Women's HealthArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesStates vary significantly in their regulation of abortion. Misinformation about abortion is pervasive and propagated by state-mandated scripts that contain abortion myths. We sought to investigate women's knowledge of abortion laws in their state. Our secondary objective was to describe women's ability to discern myths about abortion from facts about abortion. STUDY
designThis was a cross-sectional study of English- and Spanish-speaking women aged 18-49 in the United States. We enrolled members of the GfK KnowledgePanel, a probability-based, nationally-representative online sample. Our primary outcome was the proportion of correct answers to 12 questions about laws regulating abortion in a respondent's state. We asked five questions about common abortion myths. We used descriptive statistics to characterize performance on these measures and bivariate and multivariate modeling to identify risk factors for poor knowledge of state abortion laws.
resultsOf 2223 women contacted, 1057 (48%) completed the survey. The mean proportion of correct answers to 12 law questions was 18% (95% CI 17-20%). For three of five assessed myths, women endorsed myths about abortion over facts. Those who believe abortion should be illegal (aOR 2.18, CI 1.40-3.37), and those living in states with neutral or hostile state policies toward abortion (neutral aOR 1.99, CI 1.34-2.97; hostile aOR 1.6, CI 1.07-2.36) were at increased odds of poor law knowledge.
conclusionsWomen had low levels of knowledge about state abortion laws and commonly endorse abortion myths. Women's knowledge of their state's abortion laws was associated with personal views about abortion and their state policy environment. IMPLICATIONS: Supporters of reproductive rights can use these results to show policy makers that their constituents are unlikely to know about laws being passed that may profoundly affect them. These findings underscore the potential benefit in correcting widely-held, medically-inaccurate beliefs about abortion so opinions about laws can be based on fact.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.