**Abortion Appointment Availability Survey** -------------------------------------------- Introduction ------------ After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the summer of 2022, states began acting to ban abortions by enforcing "trigger bans" designed to take effect after the end of Roe, and/or enforcing pre-Roe bans that had lain dormant and unenforced in their statutes for five decades, and/or enacting new bans. [As these bans take effect][1], abortion facilities shutter, potentially causing large volumes of pregnant people seeking abortions to redirect to more distant facilities that remain open. Supported by funding from Middlebury College and the Society for Family Planning, Professor Caitlin Myers at Middlebury College and a team of Middlebury College students is conducting regular surveys of appointment availability at all U.S. abortion providers. To date, surveys have been conducted in March, June, July, August, and September of 2022. This Open Science Framework page serves as a repository for survey documentation, aggregated summary statistics, and instructions for applying for access to the restricted-use survey data. ## Protocols ## The Middlebury team closely followed a survey format and protocol developed at the [Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TXPEP)][2], which conducted regular surveys of appointment availability at Texas providers for nearly a decade until a full ban went into effect. Our adaptation of the TXPeP protocol was reviewed and verified by the Middlebury College Institutional Review Board as Exempt according to 45CFR46.101(b)(2): (2) Tests, Surveys, Interviews on 02/28/2022. [The protocol is available here][3]. The survey relies on a mystery caller approach in which the caller poses as woman seeking an abortion and inquires about the availability of both medication and procedural abortions and about the date of the next available appointment for each. To minimize burdens on facility staff, the mystery caller makes no further inquiries and does not schedule an appointment. If a facility offers online scheduling that displays available appointment dates, the surveyor relies on this information rather than placing a call. We attempt to contact all U.S. abortion facilities that we believe to be open at the time of the survey, basing our list on the [Myers Abortion Facility Database][4]. We aim to place all of the calls on a Monday or Tuesday, but if we are unable to reach a receptionist on those days we make repeated attempts over the remainder of the week so that appointment availability may also be collected on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. To illustrate using one month of the survey, in September of 2022 we attempted to contact 709 abortion facilities we believed to be in operation. Of these 709 facilities, we were unable to reach a receptionist at 35 (4.9%) facilities, most often because they were public hospitals that provide abortion services but don't often directly schedule them. An additional 13 (1.8%) facilities refused to provide us with scheduling information, most often indicating to the caller that she would need to go through a lengthy patient registration process before being provided this information. We successfully collected appointment availability for the remaining 661 (93.2%) of facilities we contacted. Of these, we collected information on Monday, September 12 for 454 (68.7%) facilities, on Tuesday, September 13 for 102 (15.4%) of facilities, on Wednesday, September 14 for 86 (13.0%) of facilities, and on Thursday, September 15 for 19 (2.9%) of facilities. To review the complete survey protocol used by the student enumerators, download the survey protocol document. ## Calculating wait times ## Based on the monthly survey results, we record whether an appointment is available at each facility. If an appointment is available, we calculate the minimum number of weekdays until the next available appointment for a medication or procedural abortion. We choose to calculate weekdays so that information collected early in the week is comparable to that collected later in the week. If a facility is in a state that requires patients to make [two trips to a facility to obtain an abortion][5]—the first for mandated in-person counseling and/or a sonogram and the second to obtain medication or a procedure— the surveyor attempts to solicit the date of both the consulation and procedure appointments. In some cases the scheduler can only provide the date of the consulation. In those situations we estimate the time until the first available procedure appointment as the time until the soonest weekday after the mandatory waiting period has expired. The restricted-use microdata contain a flag for this imputation procedure; in September 2022 63 of 661 facility wait times (9.5%) were imputed in this manner. ## Dissemination of Data ## The results of this survey will be embargoed until we publish them in an academic journal. At that time we will post aggregated summary statistics on this page as well as an application form for those who may wish to obtain the restricted-use microdata. ## Research Team ## This research would not be possible without the incredible efforts of a large team of Middlebury College Students. The Survey team is as follows: Principal Investigator: Caitlin Myers, John G. McCullough Professor of Economics at Middlebury College Contributors: Akbarali Aziz Jr., English major at Middlebury College ('24) Anabel Sesek, Economics major at Middlebury College ('23) Anthony Marinello, Economics major at Middlebury College ('22) Audrey Peiker, Political Science major at Middlebury College ('24) Awa-Victoria Morel, Psychology and Global Health double major at Middlebury College ('24) Carinna Kinnaman, Anthropology major at Middlebury College ('24) Chloe McNamara, Political Science and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies joint major at Middlebury College ('23) Chujun (Christina) Chen, Environmental Economics major at Middlebury College ('23) Constance Laranja Gooding, Economics and History double major at Middlebury College ('23) Elsa Korpi, Political Science and Russian double major at Middlebury College ('22) Emily Kuperstein, Environmental Policy major at Middlebury College ('24) Emily Ribeiro, Psychology major at Middlebury College ('24) Evelyn Sorensen, Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies and Earth and Climate Sciences double major at Middlebury College ('25) Frieda Violet Thaveethu, Economics major at Middlebury College ('22) Gabryail Meeks, Political Science major at Middlebury College ('23) Geetika Surapaneni, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry major at Middlebury College ('25) Grace Sokolow, Geography and Computer Science double major at Middlebury College ('24) Julia Joy, Computer Science major at Middlebury College ('24) Kamryn You Mak, Environmental Justice major at Middlebury College ('23.5) Kate Ratcliffe, Environmental Economics major at Middlebury College ('25) Katie Futterman, History major at Middlebury College ('24) Kayley Jane Porter, Conservation Biology major at Middlebury College ('25) Laura Rivera Martinez, Political Science major at Middlebury College ('23) Queenie Li, Economics and English & American Literature double major at Middlebury College ('22) Rashmi Bajaj, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry major at Middlebury College ('23) Rose Evans, Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies and English & American Literature double major at Middlebury College ('23) Sascha Leidecker, International and Global Studies major at Middlebury College ('24) Senna Gardner, Political Science major at Middlebury College ('24) Shay Soodak, Mathematics major at Middlebury College ('24) Sophia Cole, Economics and Gender, Sexuality, Feminist Studies double major at Middlebury College ('25) ## Funding ## The March survey was supported by the Undergraduate Research Fund at [Middlebury College][6]. Subsequent surveys were supported by a grant from the [Society for Family Planning][7]. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html [2]: https://sites.utexas.edu/txpep/ [3]: https://osf.io/z4tcr/files/osfstorage/634887ad0db48e2d60e11031 [4]: https://osf.io/8dg7r/ [5]: https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/state-indicator/mandatory-waiting-periods/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D [6]: https://www.middlebury.edu/ [7]: https://societyfp.org/