How Researcher Betsy Pleasants Used Reddit to Map Post-Roe Abortion Access

Researcher Betsy Pleasants has used digital anthropology to track the immediate fallout of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Her analysis of thousands of anonymous Reddit posts revealed a fundamental shift in how people sought reproductive healthcare as legal protections vanished.

The research, which utilized Natural Language Processing (NLP) to categorize data, analyzed 7,273 individual posts shared on the r/abortion subreddit throughout 2022. This timeframe captured the discourse surrounding the May leak of the draft opinion and the official June ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended the federal constitutional right to abortion.

NLP modeling allowed researchers to categorize thousands of anonymous posts into distinct conceptual groups.

The study identified a sharp pivot in user behavior following the court’s decision. Prior to the ruling, many posts were categorized under “decision-making,” with users seeking support or weighing their options. After the ruling, the discourse shifted heavily toward “self-management” and the navigation of significant access barriers.

According to the analysis, users expressed specific fears regarding the legal risks of accessing medical care and the reliability of online medication providers. New barriers identified in the research included low credibility of certain online ordering platforms and lengthy wait times for mail-ordered medications.

The methodology behind the study, published research in JMIR Infodemiology, used BERTopic modeling to categorize posts into eight distinct conceptual groups. This allowed researchers to map the real-time needs of a population navigating a rapidly changing legal landscape. This digital approach provides a level of insight often missing from clinical records, as users on anonymous platforms are more likely to share their fears and non-clinical strategies for obtaining care.

Pleasants, now affiliated with the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, is spearheading the Social Media and Sexual-Reproductive Health Lab (SMaSH Lab). The lab’s ongoing work focuses on digital “infospheres”—the online information environments people inhabit—viewing them as a critical social determinant of health.

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