Hospitals treat abortion differently than other procedures
Administrators at major hospitals don't advertise abortion services as much as they do colonoscopies and other common treatments
A new study indicates that most hospitals seldom advertise abortion options on their websites.
Dr. Ari Friedman, Dr. Miriam Singer, and Katherine Blanton were the authors behind the paper. It was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. “Information About Provision of Abortion on U.S. Hospital Websites: A Cross-Sectional Analysis” features research that shows how hospital administrators are to market their abortion services as opposed to how commonly they advertise other things like colonoscopies.
They conducted a cross-sectional, observational study of websites in the 2019 American Hospital Association database. Their sampling frame included hospitals with at least one labor-and-delivery bed located outside of the 13 U.S. states with the most restrictive abortion policies, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
“Our findings bring evidence to recent claims that hospitals have treated abortion care differently from other essential procedures, contributing to stigma surrounding abortion,” the authors wrote. “Direct referral pathways within a health system can also improve referral quality and alleviate capacity strain on independent clinics.”
Among 222 sampled hospitals, 79.4 percent of patient-facing websites did not mention abortion, compared with 11.1 percent for colonoscopy, a 68.3 percentage point difference.
One in three hospitals provide abortion services nationally. The authors contend that abortion is treated differently than other medical procedures. They called for more direct referral pathways to get an abortion.
“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 health care,” the article concluded.