scholarly journals Identifying National Availability of Abortion Care and Distance From Major US Cities: Systematic Online Search (Preprint)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice F Cartwright ◽  
Mihiri Karunaratne ◽  
Jill Barr-Walker ◽  
Nicole E Johns ◽  
Ushma D Upadhyay

BACKGROUND Abortion is a common medical procedure, yet its availability has become more limited across the United States over the past decade. Women who do not know where to go for abortion care may use the internet to find abortion facility information, and there appears to be more online searches for abortion in states with more restrictive abortion laws. While previous studies have examined the distances women must travel to reach an abortion provider, to our knowledge no studies have used a systematic online search to document the geographic locations and services of abortion facilities. OBJECTIVE The objective of our study was to describe abortion facilities and services available in the United States from the perspective of a potential patient searching online and to identify US cities where people must travel the farthest to obtain abortion care. METHODS In early 2017, we conducted a systematic online search for abortion facilities in every state and the largest cities in each state. We recorded facility locations, types of abortion services available, and facility gestational limits. We then summarized the frequencies by region and state. If the online information was incomplete or unclear, we called the facility using a mystery shopper method, which simulates the perspective of patients calling for services. We also calculated distance to the closest abortion facility from all US cities with populations of 50,000 or more. RESULTS We identified 780 facilities through our online search, with the fewest in the Midwest and South. Over 30% (236/780, 30.3%) of all facilities advertised the provision of medication abortion services only; this proportion was close to 40% in the Northeast (89/233, 38.2%) and West (104/262, 39.7%). The lowest gestational limit at which services were provided was 12 weeks in Wyoming; the highest was 28 weeks in New Mexico. People in 27 US cities must travel over 100 miles (160 km) to reach an abortion facility; the state with the largest number of such cities is Texas (n=10). CONCLUSIONS Online searches can provide detailed information about the location of abortion facilities and the types of services they provide. However, these facilities are not evenly distributed geographically, and many large US cities do not have an abortion facility. Long distances can push women to seek abortion in later gestations when care is even more limited.

Modern Italy ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Gilberto Mazzoli

During the Age of Mass Migration more than four million Italians reached the United States. The experience of Italians in US cities has been widely explored: however, the study of how migrants adjusted in relation to nature and food production is a relatively recent concern. Due to a mixture of racism and fear of political radicalism, Italians were deemed to be undesirable immigrants in East Coast cities and American authorities had long perceived Italian immigrants as unclean, unhealthy and carriers of diseases. As a flipside to this narrative, Italians were also believed to possess a ‘natural’ talent for agriculture, which encouraged Italian diplomats and politicians to propose the establishment of agricultural colonies in the southern United States. In rural areas Italians could profit from their agricultural skills and finally turn into ‘desirable immigrants’. The aim of this paper is to explore this ‘emigrant colonialism’ through the lens of environmental history, comparing the Italian and US diplomatic and public discourses on the potential and limits of Italians’ agricultural skills.


2021 ◽  
pp. bmjsrh-2020-200966
Author(s):  
Heidi Moseson ◽  
Laura Fix ◽  
Caitlin Gerdts ◽  
Sachiko Ragosta ◽  
Jen Hastings ◽  
...  

BackgroundTransgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive (TGE) people face barriers to abortion care and may consider abortion without clinical supervision.MethodsIn 2019, we recruited participants for an online survey about sexual and reproductive health. Eligible participants were TGE people assigned female or intersex at birth, 18 years and older, from across the United States, and recruited through The PRIDE Study or via online and in-person postings.ResultsOf 1694 TGE participants, 76 people (36% of those ever pregnant) reported considering trying to end a pregnancy on their own without clinical supervision, and a subset of these (n=40; 19% of those ever pregnant) reported attempting to do so. Methods fell into four broad categories: herbs (n=15, 38%), physical trauma (n=10, 25%), vitamin C (n=8, 20%) and substance use (n=7, 18%). Reasons given for abortion without clinical supervision ranged from perceived efficiency and desire for privacy, to structural issues including a lack of health insurance coverage, legal restrictions, denials of or mistreatment within clinical care, and cost.ConclusionsThese data highlight a high proportion of sampled TGE people who have attempted abortion without clinical supervision. This could reflect formidable barriers to facility-based abortion care as well as a strong desire for privacy and autonomy in the abortion process. Efforts are needed to connect TGE people with information on safe and effective methods of self-managed abortion and to dismantle barriers to clinical abortion care so that TGE people may freely choose a safe, effective abortion in either setting.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Kate Hunt

How do social movement organizations involved in abortion debates leverage a global crisis to pursue their goals? In recent months there has been media coverage of how anti-abortion actors in the United States attempted to use the COVID-19 pandemic to restrict access to abortion by classifying abortion as a non-essential medical procedure. Was the crisis “exploited” by social movement organizations (SMOs) in other countries? I bring together Crisis Exploitation Theory and the concept of discursive opportunity structures to test whether social movement organizations exploit crisis in ways similar to elites, with those seeking change being more likely to capitalize on the opportunities provided by the crisis. Because Twitter tends to be on the frontlines of political debate—especially during a pandemic—a dataset is compiled of over 12,000 Tweets from the accounts of SMOs involved in abortion debates across four countries to analyze the patterns in how they responded to the pandemic. The results suggest that crisis may disrupt expectations about SMO behavior and that anti- and pro-abortion rights organizations at times framed the crisis as both a “threat” and as an “opportunity.”


Author(s):  
Robin Blom

Whereas some news outlets fully identify crime suspects with name, age, address, and other personal details, other news outlets refuse to fully identify any crime suspect—or even people who have been convicted for a crime. News media from a variety of countries have accused and fully identified people of being responsible for crimes, although those persons turned out to be innocent. Yet, when someone types the names of those people in online search engines, for many, stories containing the accusations will turn up at the top of the search results. This chapter examines the positive and negative aspects from those practices by examining journalistic routines in a variety of countries, such as the United States, Nigeria, and The Netherlands. This analysis demonstrates that important ethical imperatives—often represented in ethics codes of professional journalism organizations—can be contradictory in these decision-making processes. Journalists need to weigh whether they would like to “seek truth and report it” or “minimize harm” when describing crime suspects.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 251584141986363
Author(s):  
Anthony T. Scott ◽  
Paula E. Pecen ◽  
Alan G. Palestine

Background: Cost-related nonadherence to medication can impact ophthalmic treatment outcomes. We aimed to determine whether medication prices vary between US cities and between different types of pharmacies within one city. Methods: We conducted a phone survey of eight nationwide and five independent pharmacies in five cities across the United States: Boston, Massachusetts; Charlotte, North Carolina; Denver, Colorado; Detroit, Michigan; and Seattle, Washington. A researcher called each pharmacy asking for price without insurance for four common anti-inflammatory ophthalmic medications: prednisolone acetate, prednisolone sodium phosphate, difluprednate (Durezol™), and loteprednol etabonate (Lotemax™). Results: Prednisolone sodium phosphate price could only be obtained by a small subset of pharmacies (45.2%) and was excluded from additional analysis; however, preliminary data demonstrated lower cost of prednisolone sodium phosphate over prednisolone acetate. Three-way analysis of variance revealed no interaction between pharmacy type (chain versus independent), city, and drug ( F = 0.40, p = 0.92). A significant interaction was identified between pharmacy type and drug ( F = 5.0, p = 0.008), but not city and pharmacy type ( F = 0.66, p = 0.62) or city and drug ( F = 0.27, p = 0.97). Average drug prices were lower at independent pharmacies compared with chain pharmacies for difluprednate (US$211.36 versus US$216.85, F = 1.09, p = 0.297) and significantly lower for loteprednol etabonate (US$255.49 versus US$274.86, F = 14.7, p < 0.001). Prednisolone acetate was cheaper at chain pharmacies, but not statistically significantly cheaper (US$48.82 versus US$51.61, F = 0.34, p = 0.559). Conclusions: Medication prices do not differ significantly between US cities. High variation of drug prices within the same city demonstrates how comparison shopping can provide cost savings for patients and may reduce cost-related nonadherence.


Author(s):  
Sunil Chopra ◽  
Ioana Andreas ◽  
Sigmund Gee ◽  
Ivi Kolasi ◽  
Stephane Lhoste ◽  
...  

In September 2010 Suresh Krishna, vice president of operations and integration at Polaris Industries Inc., a manufacturer of all-terrain vehicles, Side-by-Sides, and snowmobiles, needed to recommend a location for a new plant to manufacture the company's Side-by-Side vehicles.The economic slowdown in the United States had put considerable pressure on Polaris's profits, so the company was considering whether it should follow the lead of other manufacturers and open a facility in a country with lower labor costs. China and Mexico were shortlisted as possible locations for the new factory, which would be the first Polaris manufacturing facility located outside the Midwestern United States. By the end of the year Krishna needed to recommend to the board whether Polaris should build a new plant abroad (near-shored in Mexico or off-shored in China) or continue to manufacture in its American facilities. Evaluate tradeoffs between different geographic locations when establishing a manufacturing facility (off-shoring, near-shoring, and on-shoring) Run a sensitivity analysis on total cost Assess the impact of transportation costs, exchange rates, labor cost rates, lead times, and other assumptions on total costs Identify qualitative factors to be considered when deciding between non-U.S. facility locations, transportation time variability, consumer perceptions, and cultural differences


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Chloe Romanis ◽  
Jordan A Parsons ◽  
Nathan Hodson

Abstract In this paper we consider the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic is having on access to abortion care in Great Britain (GB) (England, Wales, and Scotland) and the United States (US). The pandemic has exacerbated problems in access to abortion services because social distancing or lockdown measures, increasing caring responsibilities, and the need to self-isolate are making clinics much more difficult to access, and this is when clinics are able to stay open which many are not. In response we argue there is a need to facilitate telemedical early medical abortion in order to ensure access to essential healthcare for people in need of terminations. There are substantial legal barriers to the establishment of telemedical abortion services in parts of GB and parts of the US. We argue that during a pandemic any restriction on telemedicine for basic healthcare is an unjustifiable human rights violation and, in the US, is unconstitutional.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yong Jin Park

PurposeThe purpose of the current study is to theorize and apply a socio-technological model – the powerful influence of social determinants in conditioning the effects of information attention on social outcomes. Fundamentally, this study is motivated by the idea that the social determinants of information flow can be used as a predictive tool to inform public socio-policy decisions.Design/methodology/approachThis study draws upon digital disparity literature and uses publicly available Google search queries in exploring online information attention and its relationships to the HIV/AIDS diffusion in US cities. This study’s secondary data collected from extant sources is used to draw attention to a holistic urban ecology under which online search attention represents the variation of information access at the aggregate level.FindingsThe main finding shows that online information attention, as indicated by search trend, is far from being a simple predictor, but operates in complex interactions with existing social environments. A bivariate correlation between AIDS information search and AIDS diffusion rate was found to be significant. However, predictive multivariate models displayed robust effects of social contextual variables, such as income level and racial composition of cities, in moderating the effect of online search information flow.Practical implicationsThe importance of these insights is discussed for reducing socio-health disparities at the macro-social level, and policymakers and health administrators are recommended to incubate supportive online infrastructure as an effective preventive measure at the time of a crisis.Originality/valueThe unique contribution of this study is the premise that looks at the aggregate-ecological contour of cities within which the potential benefits of information occur, instead of examining the isolated function of mediated information per se. In this vein, online information search, in lieu of the exposure to mass media message that is often measured via self-reported items, is a particularly unique and fruitful area of future inquiry that this study promotes.


2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 467-469
Author(s):  
Ashley Clare Hague

The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit recently upheld a United States District Court for the District of Maine Judge's decision to dismiss a Maine plaintiff's medical malpractice claim against a Massachusetts hospital defendant for want of personal jurisdiction over the hospital. The Court of Appeals found it unreasonable to hale hospitals into an out-of-state court merely because they accept out-of-state patients.Plaintiff Danielle Harlow is a Maine resident who suffered a stroke at the age of six while undergoing a medical procedure at Children's Hospital of Boston, Massachusetts (“Children's Hospital”). The stroke, allegedly caused by the Hospital's negligence, led to brain damage resulting in partial paralysis and cognitive and behavioral impairments. The procedure was supposed to treat Harlow's rapid heartbeat, a condition related to her Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome. Harlow's pediatrician in Maine recommended that she visit Children's Hospital in Boston to treat her arrhythmia.


Focaal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (89) ◽  
pp. 114-129
Author(s):  
Don Nonini

On Juneteenth, Friday, June 19, 2020, unionized workers of the Durham Workers Assembly of Durham, North Carolina, held a rally in front of Durham Police Headquarters to “defund the police” in support of the national Black Lives Matter movement protesting in massive numbers in the streets of US cities and being met with overwhelming police repression. Black Lives Matter marches in the streets of cities and towns of the United States continued, as the world looked on.


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