ArticleArchives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique2021
Abortion care in a pandemic: an analysis of the number and social profile of people requesting and receiving abortion care during the first COVID-19 lockdown (March 16 to June 14, 2020) in Flanders, Belgium.
Article in Archives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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
6 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 8 citations in OpenAlex.
- Abortion services during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review.Reproductive health · 2023Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Knowledge and use of emergency contraceptives amid women seeking termination of pregnancy in the North West province.African journal of primary health care & family medicine · 2025Article
- Is domestic violence during COVID-19 in lactating women related to infantile colic? An important question.BMC public health · 2024Article
- A Retrospective Observational Study to Assess the Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Spontaneous and Voluntary Abortivity in the Apulia Region of Italy.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- [Induced abortion and COVID-19 : What changed with the pandemic in 2020].Revue d'epidemiologie et de sante publique · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic and the national COVID-19 measures might have increased potential barriers to abortion care and created new ones, especially for vulnerable groups. This study documents the impact of the pandemic and the lockdown measures on the profile of people going through the abortion process.
methodsUsing anonymized patient records from a Belgian abortion centre, we first compared the number of abortion requests and procedures during the first COVID-19 lockdown with the same months in the five preceding years. Next, we analysed the social profile of people requesting an abortion in those two time periods and looked at the number of long-acting reversible contraceptive devices (LARC) placed after curettage.
resultsThe abortion centre saw a drop in the number of abortion requests during the lockdown. This difference was more pronounced for people in paid employment and people using (modern) contraception. People were also more likely to request an abortion earlier in their pregnancy. The drop in abortion procedures and LARC's placed after curettage was proportionate to the drop in abortion requests and did not differ according to clients' characteristics.
conclusionQuestions arose concerning the potential selectivity with which COVID-19 influenced the need for abortion care and accessibility to services. Although there was a general drop in abortion requests and procedures during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the studied abortion centre, our results suggest that the profile of people requesting and receiving an abortion did only slightly change during the lockdown, and did not affect vulnerable groups visibly harder.
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What OpenQuestion holds
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.