Medication Abortion Coverage in Major U.S. Newspapers, 2022–2023: A Multi-Method Analysis

Abstract Introduction Medication abortion is increasingly important to U.S. abortion-seekers in the post- Roe era, yet no research has specifically addressed how medication abortion is covered in U.S. news sources. To fill this gap, we examined how major U.S. newspapers covered medication abortion from 6 months before to 1 year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Methods We searched five leading U.S. newspapers for all articles mentioning “medication abortion” published between January 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023 ( n = 1132 articles). We analyzed data three ways: descriptive analysis of the corpus; natural language processing (NLP), to identify themes of coverage; and ethnographic content analysis (ECA), to identify basic facts, personal stories, and speakers included. Results Coverage of medication abortion primarily focused on court cases challenging FDA approval of mifepristone. Politicians and lawyers were quoted more than healthcare providers. Less than half of articles included basic facts on medication abortion. Only one in five articles included a personal story of someone seeking abortion. Conclusions Newspapers cover medication abortion as a serious policy issue, yet often fail to convey basic facts and human implications of this critical issue. Policy Implications Given these limitations of newspaper coverage on the topic, policymakers should fund efforts to educate the public about medication abortion.