ArticleWomen's health (London, England)
Health providers' reasons for participating in abortion care: A scoping review.
Article in Women's health (London, England). The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- From legalisation to practice: implementation of newly legalised health interventions in healthcare settings - a systematic review.BMJ open · 2026Pooled it
- Abortion stigma among abortion providers in high-income countries: a mixed methods systematic review.Sexual and reproductive health matters · 2025Pooled it
- Factors that affect the provision of medical abortion services in Australian primary care: a mixed methods systematic review.The Medical journal of Australia · 2025Pooled it
- Implementation of safe abortion care policy in africa: a scoping review of readiness and outcomes.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Perceived factors shaping unsafe abortion practices among young women in Bongo District, Ghana.Frontiers in reproductive health · 2026Article
- Navigating structural and personal dilemmas: a phenomenological study of midwives providing legal abortion care in Nampula, Mozambique.Sexual and reproductive health matters · 2025Article
- Abortion stigma in healthcare: physicians' perspectives.BMC medical ethics · 2025Article
- To participate or not to participate: The troublesome question of nurses' conscientious objection to abortion: A qualitative study.Journal of advanced nursing · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThere is a global shortage of health providers in abortion care. Public discourse presents abortion providers as dangerous and greedy and links 'conscience' with refusal to participate. This may discourage provision. A scoping review of empirical evidence is needed to inform public perceptions of the reasons that health providers participate in abortion.
objectiveThe study aimed to identify what is known about health providers' reasons for participating in abortion provision. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: Studies were eligible if they included health providers' reasons for participating in legal abortion provision. Only empirical studies were eligible for inclusion. SOURCES OF EVIDENCE: We searched the following databases from January 2000 until January 2022: Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, Excerpta Medica Database, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, ScienceDirect and Centre for Agricultural and Biosciences International Abstracts. Grey literature was also searched.
methodsDual screening was conducted of both title/abstract and full-text articles. Health providers' reasons for provision were extracted and grouped into preliminary categories based on the existing research. These categories were revised by all authors until they sufficiently reflected the extracted data.
resultsFrom 3251 records retrieved, 68 studies were included. In descending order, reasons for participating in abortion were as follows: supporting women's choices and advocating for women's rights (76%); being professionally committed to participating in abortion (50%); aligning with personal, religious or moral values (39%); finding provision satisfying and important (33%); being influenced by workplace exposure or support (19%); responding to the community needs for abortion services (14%) and participating for practical and lifestyle reasons (8%).
conclusionAbortion providers participated in abortion for a range of reasons. Reasons were mainly focused on supporting women's choices and rights; providing professional health care; and providing services that aligned with the provider's own personal, religious or moral values. The findings provided no evidence to support negative portrayals of abortion providers present in public discourse. Like conscientious objectors, abortion providers can also be motivated by conscience.
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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.