Betsy Pleasants, a graduate student at UC Berkeley School of Public Health, shifted her dissertation focus in spring 2022 when the Supreme Court indicated it would overturn Roe v. Wade. Originally researching the pandemic’s effects on abortion services, she redirected her work to examine real-time discussions on Reddit following the Court’s June decision to end the constitutional right to abortion.
Pleasants and her colleagues analyzed more than 7,000 posts from the Reddit forum r/abortion using natural language processing, a computational method for identifying patterns in language, combined with qualitative analysis of selected posts. The research identified 55 distinct topics discussed within the community. The dual-method approach prioritized user privacy while creating a framework for using artificial intelligence tools while maintaining context and recognizing the people represented in the data.
The research confirmed established barriers to abortion access, including high costs and limited appointment availability, while also uncovering less commonly documented challenges. These included delays in receiving abortion medications by mail, concerns about the credibility of online ordering platforms, and worries about legal risks associated with seeking abortion or related medical care. The platform’s anonymity allowed participants to share personal experiences they might otherwise hesitate to discuss.
Pleasants, now a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for Women’s Health Research at the University of North Carolina, was recognized as a STAT Wunderkind for this work. Mentors noted the research offered an unusually comprehensive view of online discourse by analyzing a large-scale dataset rather than relying on smaller random samples, providing what researchers described as a broader perspective on how people communicate when seeking reproductive health information and services.
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