Abstract

Tracking the impact of Roe v. Wade reversal using state-specific analysis

Charles Senteio, PhD, MBA, MSW (CHES, LCSW, CHW-I)¹, Elizabeth Talmont, DNP, RN², Kimberly McBride, PhD, MA³, Sreelekha Prakash, MD⁴ (1)Rutgers University, (2)Planned Parenthood of Central New Jersey, Rutgers University School of Nursing, (3)APHA Chair-Elect, Sexual and Reproductive Health Section; University of Toledo, Associate Professor, Department of Women's and Gender Studies,, (4)President, APHA NJ Affiliate; Stockton University, Assistant Professor in Health Science

APHA 2022 Annual Meeting and Expo

This presentation will describe the vital need to quantify the impact of the June 24, 2022, Supreme Court decision to reverse the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. We will describe how to use insights from state-specific tracking and analysis tools that were developed to track COVID infection, vaccination, hospitalization, and deaths to inform data collection and analysis approaches to monitor reproductive variables. This tracking of COVID data is still being done by the CDC and other organizations (e.g., Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, etc.). Our goal is to describe an approach to quantify the impact of the reversal, in particular, enabling analysis of populations already at risk for reproductive health disparities, such as underserved populations and ethnic minorities. The presentation will offer specific metrics and approaches to track the impact beyond people who are denied access to abortions. We will describe the information needed to gauge impact in four specific areas:
1) Ectopic pregnancies, which only occur in 2 percent of pregnancies but are the leading cause of maternal death in the first trimester.
2) Loss of pregnancy, which after 10 weeks of gestation disproportionately impacts Black women and is important because pregnancy loss is managed with similar clinical procedures and medications as those used for abortion.
3) Contraception use, because some opponents of abortion rights oppose impeding implantation which various forms of contraception (e.g., oral contraceptives, intrauterine devices) facilitate
4) Assisted reproductive processes like In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), which would be threatened under legislation that bans abortion after fertilization. Black women are twice as likely to experience infertility while they are half as likely to be treated for it compared to white women. Black women are also less likely to get pregnant and have a live birth after the use of assisted reproductive processes (i.e., IVF).
The collection and analysis of this data are vital to articulate to policymakers and citizens as the profound and potentially inequitable impact of this reversal affects the already disadvantaged population.