Oct. 16 (UPI) — According to a study released on Monday by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School, most hospitals in the United States either exclude or conceal information about abortion services on their websites.
The study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, analyzed 222 U.S. hospitals and discovered that 79.4% of their websites did not mention abortion.
“Our findings bring evidence to recent claims that hospitals have treated abortion care differently from other essential procedures, contributing to stigma surrounding abortion,” wrote the authors, led by Dr. Ari Friedman, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
The researchers excluded hospitals in states with extreme abortion bans since the Supreme Court overturned its 1973 opinion in Roe vs. Wade in June 2022. However, hospitals with specialized abortion training were included in the study.
The authors compared the information provided about abortion services with that of colonoscopy, another common procedure. They found that only 11.1% of the websites studied did not include information about colonoscopy.
Additionally, the authors found that Internet searches for “abortion near me” were five times more prevalent than searches for “colonoscopy near me.” This finding is consistent with previous research, which indicated a surge in abortion-related Internet searches during the week of the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which overturned Roe.
The study also discovered that among hospital websites that provided information about abortion, that information was displayed half a page lower in search engine results. Furthermore, the researchers noted that 89.8% of websites that included abortion information failed to include patient instructions for pre- or post-procedural care, compared to 42.2% of those with colonoscopy information.
It’s important to note that the study did not determine which hospitals included in the research actually offer abortion care. However, the researchers highlighted that one in three hospitals nationwide provides abortion services.
“In summary, our results suggest that hospitals and their health systems are not advertising abortion in a manner consistent with other outpatient procedures nor consistent with medical society statements that abortion is routine, essential healthcare,” the authors concluded.
