ArticleBMC women's health2023
Abortion terminology preferences: a cross-sectional survey of people accessing abortion care.
Article in BMC women's health, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Abortion stigma among people seeking abortion care in high-income countries: a mixed-methods systematic review.Sexual and reproductive health matters · 2025Pooled it
- Navigating grief and healthcare: Mixed-methods study on patient experiences of miscarriage during COVID-19.PloS one · 2026Article
- Prevalence and determinants of abortion among married women of reproductive age in rural and urban areas of the Southeastern Zone of Tigray, Ethiopia, 2024 a postwar study.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Perceptions and attitudes of Rohingya community stakeholders to pregnancy termination services: a qualitative study in camps of Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.Conflict and health · 2024Article
- Recruiting foreign-born individuals who have sought an abortion in the United States: Lessons from a feasibility study.Frontiers in global women's health · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAbortion stigma likely affects the terminology abortion patients, providers and the public use or avoid using to refer to abortion care. Knowing the terminology people seeking abortion prefer could help inform the language used in clinical interactions and improve patients' experiences with abortion care. However, research in the U.S. has not examined patients' preferences in this area or whether terminology preferences vary by participant characteristics, in the way that experiences of stigma vary across different contexts and communities. This study aims to describe preferred terminology among people presenting for abortion care and to explore the pregnancy-related characteristics associated with these preferences.
methodsWe surveyed abortion patients about their experiences accessing abortion care, including preferred terms for the procedure. Respondents could mark more than one term, suggest their own term, or indicate no preference. We recruited people ages 15-45 seeking abortion from four U.S. abortion facilities located in three states (California, Illinois, and New Mexico) from January to June 2019. We used descriptive statistics and multivariable multinomial logistic regression to explore associations between respondents' pregnancy-related characteristics and their preferred terminology.
resultsAmong the 1092 people approached, 784 (77%) initiated the survey and 697 responded to the terminology preference question. Most participants (57%, n = 400) preferred only one term. Among those participants, "abortion" (43%) was most preferred, followed by "ending a pregnancy" (29%), and "pregnancy termination" (24%). In adjusted multivariable models, participants who worried "very much" that other people might find out about the abortion (29%) were significantly more likely than those who were "not at all" worried (13%) to prefer "ending a pregnancy" over having no preference for a term (adjusted relative risk ratio: 2.68, 95% Confidence Interval: 1.46-4.92).
conclusionsPeople seeking abortion have varied preferences for how they want to refer to their abortions, in particular if they anticipate abortion stigma. Findings can be useful for clinicians and researchers so that they can be responsive to people's preferences during clinical interactions and in the design and conduct of abortion research.
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