The impacts of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade have been vast, and they don’t stop at abortion care. Many people have lost access to other forms of reproductive health care, including birth control.
With half of US states hostile to abortion or banning it outright, nearly 1 in 5 patients travels out of state for abortion care. The states they travel from usually don’t offer robust affordable contraceptive programs. The abortion clinics they travel to often have limited coverage of a few methods, leaving a troubling gap where people aren’t getting the birth control they want.
To address this gap, UCSF Bixby Center’s Beyond the Pill Program conducted a targeted training intervention for clinics that see a high volume of out-of-state abortion patients.
Yasaman Zia, PhD, and the study team assessed the intervention impact at 6 abortion clinics in Illinois, New Mexico, and Kansas, which are among the states that receive the most travel patients. During the year-long period of the study, the clinic sites saw 22,800 abortion patients from 22 different states.
In partnership with the Southwest Contraceptive Access Network (SCAN), Beyond the Pill adapted their UCSF CME-accredited training on contraception in abortion care to post-Dobbs needs, including for the surge in travel patients. The training sessions covered the latest evidence, contraceptive guidelines and methods, indications that impact what methods people can use safely, and delivery of person-centered care—including only counseling people who want contraception. The training was based on non-coercive approaches that focus on reproductive autonomy, and instruction on recognizing and reducing provider bias. They taught a wide range of methods for abortion patients, including pills, implant, IUDs, self-injectable birth control and emergency contraception. Clinics also received patient education resources, online resources for prescriptions, IUDs, and donations including condoms and emergency contraceptives.
A newly published paper in the American Journal of Public Health shows that the training bridged knowledge gaps and increased awareness of bias in providing birth control. There was a significant increase in the number of patients accessing birth control methods, including pills, emergency contraception, rings, and implants. Overall, the clinics connected abortion patients seeking birth control to a greater number of options, an essential component of people’s agency in deciding on contraception.
With continued attempts to restrict abortion across the country, this novel approach could help increase access to contraceptive care for people most targeted by these violations of reproductive autonomy. Integrating a person-centered approach to contraceptive care in abortion can address disparities, including new gaps created by this politicization of reproductive health care.