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

2026-03-23

AI Summary

Following the Dobbs decision, this study examines how online discourse in the United States reflects the multifaceted barriers surrounding abortion access. Analyzing over 17,000 Reddit posts, the research introduces a novel multidimensional framework that integrates information type, gestational stage, eight categories of barriers, and emotional expression. Employing a multi-step classification pipeline, sentiment analysis, and topic modeling, the study systematically links barrier types, emotional states, information-seeking behaviors, and temporal dynamics for the first time. Findings reveal that affective and psychological barriers—such as anxiety, fear, and sadness—consistently dominate online narratives, with distinct evolutionary patterns emerging in response to shifting legal contexts. This work offers a new lens for understanding public discourse under evolving reproductive policy landscapes.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Natural Language Processing: Discourse, Pragmatics & Argument Mining
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Argumentation

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Media and governance, opinion dynamics, filter bubbles, polarization
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness, privacy, and diversity in economic environments
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Sentiment analysis and opinion mining

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.

Problem

• abortion access
• reproductive rights
• online discourse
• barriers to care
• Dobbs decision

Innovation

• computational analysis
• topic modeling
• barrier classification
• emotion-behavior linkage
• temporal discourse analysis