Abortion information not mentioned on most health system websites

Key takeaways:

• Websites mentioned abortion care only 6.3% of the time.
• Hospitals with abortion and family planning residency training were more likely to offer that information.

A majority of health systems’ websites were missing information about abortion care, a recent study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found.

Ari B. Friedman, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, and colleagues explained that patients often rely on online resources for procedures and medications, particularly abortion.

“Indeed, U.S. web searches for ‘abortion near me’ are five times more common than for ‘colonoscopy near me,’” they wrote. “However, it is unknown whether hospitals and their health systems offer these online resources.”

So, the researchers conducted a cross-sectional analysis on the websites of 222 hospitals in the 2019 American Hospital Association database, 65 of which had Ryan Residency Training Programs in abortion and family planning.

Overall, 79.4% of patient-oriented websites did not mention abortion compared with 11.1% for colonoscopy — a 68.3 percentage point difference (95% CI, 61.6-75).

When abortion procedures were mentioned on health systems’ websites, the information was a mean 0.5 pages lower (95% CI, 0.1-1) in search engine results compared with mentions of colonoscopy procedures.

The researchers also found that websites mentioned and offered abortion procedures 6.3% of the time vs. 85.6% for colonoscopy care (difference = -79.4; 95% CI, -84.9 to -73.3). Additionally, 14.3% of websites mentioned abortion care but did not offer it.

Within hospital subgroups, information about abortion care was offered on 47.7% of Ryan Residency hospital sites (95% CI, 36%-59.6%) compared with 4.5% (95% CI, 2.2%-8.9%) on non-Ryan sites.

Still, colonoscopy information appeared significantly more frequently on Ryan websites than abortion, at 93.7% — a difference of 44.4 percentage points (95% CI, 29.3-59.9).

Friedman and colleagues said the results were consistent with the trend of obstetrics and gynecology residency websites rarely disclosing abortion training to prospective trainees, in addition to the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling that “markedly reduced care access and greater travel.”

“Laws such as Texas’ [Senate Bill 8] can further limit providers’ ability to refer, increasing the importance of patient-facing website information,” they wrote.

The researchers highlighted the crucial role hospitals play in abortion care, with one in three hospitals across the U.S. offering abortion services while serving as leaders in establishing what constitutes as routine care.

“Our findings bring evidence to recent claims that hospitals have treated abortion care differently from other essential procedures, contributing to stigma surrounding abortion,” they wrote. “Direct referral pathways within a health system can also improve referral quality and alleviate capacity strain on independent clinics.”