How AI and Reddit Are Revealing Post-Roe Abortion Barriers

Public health researchers tracking post-Roe abortion access are turning to natural language processing and thousands of Reddit posts to document emerging barriers in real time. Betsy Pleasants, a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for Women’s Health Research at the University of North Carolina, adapted her doctoral dissertation at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

Tracking Abortion Barriers Through Natural Language Processing

Working with her thesis committee, Pleasants analyzed more than 7,000 posts from the Reddit forum r/abortion spanning the months before, during, and after the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft decision. The research team combined natural language processing tools with qualitative close readings of post subsets to identify 55 distinct topics. Ushma Upadhyay, a professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California San Francisco who mentored Pleasants, noted that computational methods allowed researchers to capture a more complete picture than traditional manageable sample sizes.

Pleasants said that when it became clear Roe v. Wade was going to be overturned, her team agreed they had to shift the project, which she noted was positioned to offer timely insights into what the policy change means in people’s lives.

The analysis reaffirmed well-established obstacles such as high costs and limited appointment availability. It also highlighted lesser-known hurdles, including mail delays for abortion medications, doubts regarding the credibility of online ordering platforms, and fears surrounding the legal risks of seeking care. Danny Valdez, an associate professor of public health at the Indiana School of Public Health-Bloomington who was not involved in the study, described computational research as a tool that provides a broad overview of how people communicate when seeking help.

Protecting User Privacy in Sensitive Health Research

Because the research examined sensitive and stigmatized experiences that could potentially expose individuals to prosecution, the study team implemented strict privacy safeguards. Researchers employed a heavy disguise process to replace potentially identifiable posts with composite quotations that combined and rephrased similar experiences. The team tested these composites using online searches and plagiarism-detection tools to ensure they could not be traced back to original authors.

Valdez praised the methodological approach, noting that researchers are slowing down fast-moving technology to maintain a firm qualitative lens. Pleasants emphasized that documenting these experiences is still important despite restrictive policies, noting that her current work has expanded to encompass contraception and online misinformation.