Abortion, contraception internet searches increased after Dobbs decision

Key takeaways :

• Abortion- and contraception-related searches increased in states with bans vs. states without.
• There were increases in searches for Planned Parenthood in states with trigger laws or bans.

Both abortion- and contraception-related internet searches increased from the weeks before and the weeks after the Supreme Court Dobbs decision in June 2022, according to a retrospective cross-sectional study published in JAMA Health Forum.

“Using data from Google search trends, this study aimed to provide a timely analysis of how the Dobbs ruling affected information seeking for reproductive health care access, which may foreshadow potential consequences for reproductive health,” Sumedha Gupta, PhD, associate professor of economics in the department of economics at Indiana University Purdue University, Indianapolis, and colleagues wrote. “Exploiting the differential legal repercussions of Dobbs on abortion criminalization across states, we used a difference-in-differences study design to evaluate how online information-seeking behavior regarding abortion and contraception care changes in response to the leaked draft of the Supreme Court decision and the release of the final version of the ruling.”

Researchers assessed nationwide real-time internet search data by state-week from January 2021 to June 2022 and evaluated abortion- and contraception-related internet searches following the Supreme Court draft majority decision leak in May 2022 and the final ruling in June 2022 in states immediately affected by abortion restrictions compared with other states.

The primary outcome was the number of searches per 10 million Google queries in a state-week for terms related to abortion or contraception care.

In states with trigger laws or abortion bans, from the weeks before May 2022 to weeks following the draft majority leak, abortion-related internet searches increased from 16,302 to 75,746 per 10 million searches per state-week. This increase was 42% higher than that observed in states with laws protecting abortion access.

Contraception-related internet searches also increased from 56,055 before the Supreme Court ruling in June 2022 to 82,133 following the Dobbs decision in states with abortion bans. This increase was 25% higher than that observed in states with laws protecting abortion access.

In addition, researchers noted relative increases of 47% in searches for Planned Parenthood following the Supreme Court leak and the Dobbs decision in states with trigger laws (2,685 vs. 6,470 per 10 million searches per state-week) and 60% increases in states with abortion bans (3,238 vs. 9,112 per 10 million searches per state-week).

“These changes in reproductive health-related information-seeking behavior may be interpreted as early indicators of probable longer-term outcomes and could be critical for shaping ongoing policy discussions,” the researchers wrote. “Moreover, to the extent that internet search trends reflect the pursuit of specific reproductive health services, the study results reiterate that internet-based information dissemination, including information on where individuals can legally and safely obtain reproductive care or telemedicine consultations with health care professionals, may serve as a viable harm-reduction strategy.”