Poster abstracts

Objectives: Understanding people's preferences for abortion terminology can help to support patient-centered care and inform research efforts. This study aims to assess the preferred terminology among people presenting for abortions and to explore the pregnancy characteristics associated with these preferences. Methods: In 2019, we administered surveys to people ages 15-45 seeking care at four US abortion facilities about their experiences accessing abortion care, including preferred terms for their care. Respondents could mark more than one term, suggest their own, or indicate no preference. We used descriptive statistics and multivariate multinomial logistic regression to explore associations between respondents’ abortion circumstances and their preferred terminology. Results: Preferred terms among the 697 participants responding to the terminology preference question included: “abortion” (43%), “ending a pregnancy” (33%), and “pregnancy termination” (29%); 24% had no preference. In multivariate models, those who were not sure if they wanted to become pregnant were more likely than those who did not want to be pregnant to prefer “abortion” than to have no preference (adjusted Relative Risk Ratio, aRRR: 1.74, 1.01-3.00). Participants who felt very worried other people might find out about the abortion, compared to participants who were not at all worried, were more likely to prefer “ending a pregnancy” over no preference for a term (aRRR: 2.70, 1.46-4.98). Conclusions: These findings indicate that people have varied preferences for how they want to refer to their abortions, emphasizing the importance of being responsive to people's preferences during clinical interactions and in the design and conduct of abortion research.