Objective: To understand the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on abortion care-seeking in Maryland, a state with Medicaid coverage for abortion, high service availability, and laws supporting abortion rights.
Methods: We conducted semi-structured telephone interviews with 15 women who had an abortion between January 2021 and March 2022 at a hospital-based clinic in a mid-sized Maryland city. We purposively recruited participants with varied pandemic financial impacts. Interview questions prompted participants to reflect on how the pandemic affected their lives, pregnancy decisions, and experiences seeking abortion care. We analyzed our data for themes.
Results: All participants had some insurance coverage for their abortion; over half paid using Medicaid. Many participants experienced pandemic financial hardship, with several reporting job, food, and housing insecurity as circumstances influencing their decision to have an abortion. Most women who self-reported minimal financial hardship caused by the pandemic indicated they sought an abortion for reasons unrelated to COVID-19. In contrast, women with economic hardship viewed their pregnancies as unsupportable due to COVID-19 exacerbating financial instability, even when they desired to continue the pregnancy. All participants expressed that having an abortion was the best decision for their lives. Yet, when making decisions about their pregnancy, the most financially disadvantaged women weighed their desires against the pandemic's constraints on their reproductive self-determination.
Conclusions: The pandemic changed abortion care-seeking circumstances even in a setting with minimal access barriers. Financial hardship influenced some women to have an abortion for a pregnancy that-while unplanned-they may have preferred to continue.
Keywords: United States; abortion; coronavirus; qualitative methods; reproductive autonomy; reproductive justice; thematic analysis.
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