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Reddit After Roe: A Computational Analysis of Abortion Narratives and Barriers in the Wake of Dobbs
Journal article   Open access

Reddit After Roe: A Computational Analysis of Abortion Narratives and Barriers in the Wake of Dobbs

Aria Pessianzadeh, Alex H. Poole and Rezvaneh Rezapour
Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, v 20(1), pp 1829-1848
25 May 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v20i1.42725
url
https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v20i1.42725View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

The 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization reshaped the reproductive rights landscape, introducing new uncertainty and barriers to abortion access. We present a large-scale computational analysis of abortion discourse on Reddit, examining how barriers to access are articulated across information-seeking and information-sharing behaviors, different stages of abortion (before, during, after), and three phases of the Dobbs decision in 2022. Drawing on more than 17,000 posts from four abortion-related subreddits, we employed a multi-step pipeline to classify posts by information type, abortion stage, barrier category, and expressed emotions. Using a codebook of eight barrier types, including legal, financial, emotional, and social obstacles, we analyzed their associations with emotions and information behaviors. Topic modeling of model-generated barrier rationales further revealed how discourse evolved in response to shifting legal and cultural contexts. Our findings show that emotional and psychological barriers consistently dominate abortion narratives online, with emotions such as nervousness, confusion, fear, and sadness prevalent across discourse. By linking information behaviors, barriers, emotions, and temporal dynamics, this study provides a multi-dimensional account of how abortion is navigated in online communities.

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