**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. Surveys were conducted at irregular intervals in 2022 and 2023. Beginning in 2024, surveys will be conducted quarterly, in January, April, July, and October. To date, surveys have been conducted in the following months: **Survey Rounds** March 2022 June 2022 July 2022 August 2022 September 2022 December 2022 April 2023 September 2023 January 2024 April 2024 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. For three providers with multiple locations and a single call center, we cannot escape detection with a mystery caller approach and instead receive the appointment availability information directly from a scheduler with knowledge and approval from the provider. 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 another weekday. To illustrate using one month of the survey, in April 2024, we attempted to contact 760 abortion facilities we believed to be in operation. Of these 760 facilities, we were unable to reach a receptionist at 10 (1.3%) facilities, most often because they were public hospitals that provide abortion services but don't often directly schedule them. An additional 22 (2.9%) 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 728 (96%) of facilities we contacted. Of these, we collected information on Monday, April 15 for 466 (64.0%) facilities, on Tuesday, April 16 for 166 (22.8%) of facilities, on Wednesday, April 17 for 79 (10.9%) of facilities, and on Thursday, April 18 for 17 (2.3%) 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 April 2024 97 of 704 collected facility wait times (16%) 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 Middlebury College Student Contributors: Jori Almahdi, Undeclared major (2027) Phoebe An, History & International and Global Studies double major (2027) Akbarali Aziz Jr., English major (2024) Rashmi Bajaj, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry major (2023) Chujun (Christina) Chen, Environmental Economics major (2023) Sophia Cole, Economics & Gender Sexuality and Feminist Studies double major (2025) Isabelle Cone, Undeclared major (2027) Georgia Crosby, International Politics and Economics major (2025.5) Emma Dobson, Undeclared major (2027) Rose Evans, Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies, English & American Literature double major (2023) Afra Fairooz, International Politics and Economics major (2025) Katie Futterman, History major (2024) Senna Gardner, Political Science major (2024) Avery Goldstein, Economics major (2026.5) Constance Laranja Gooding, Economics and History double major (2023) Kathryn Goodman, International and Global Studies major (2024) Angel Gurung, Environmental Economics major (2027) Sarah Holmes, Economics major (2027) Julia Joy, Computer Science major (2024) Carinna Kinnaman, Anthropology major (2024) Elsa Korpi, Political Science & Russian double major (2022) Emily Kuperstein, Environmental Policy major (2024) Sascha Leidecker, International and Global Studies major (2024) Queenie Li, Economics, English & American Literature double major (2022) Annabella Lucente, Geography & Environmental Studies double major (2025) Kamryn You Mak, Environmental Justice major (2023.5) Anthony Marinello, Economics major (2022) Laura Rivera Martinez, Political Science major (2023) Chloe McNamara, Political Science & Gender Sexuality and Feminist Studies double major (2023) Gabryail Meeks, Political Science major (2023) Awa-Victoria Morel, Psychology & Global Health double major (2024) Grace Mumford, Biology major (2025) Audrey Peiker, Political Science major (2024) Kayley Porter, Conservation Biology major (2025) Truett Ramsey, Economics & Italian double major (2025.5) Kate Ratcliffe, Environmental economics major (2025) Emily Ribeiro, Psychology & Global Health double major (2024) Anabel Sesek, Economics major (2023) Grace Sokolow, Geography & Computer Science double major (2024) Shay Soodak, Mathematics major (2024) Evelyn Sorensen, Gender Sexuality and Feminist Studies & Earth and Climate Sciences double major (2025) Geetika Surapaneni, Molecular Biology & Biochemistry major (2025) Geetika Surapaneni, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry major (2025) Frieda Violet Thaveethu, Economics major (2022) Claire Vermillion, Political Science major (2024) Abby Ward, Political science major (2025) Abigail Ward, Psychology major (2025) Sasha Wintersteller, Psychology & Studio Art double major (2026.5) Siyu Yang, Sociology & Statistics double major (2025) ## Funding ## The first survey round, conducted in March 2022, 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/