Increased demand for abortion information and advice during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Abstract

Access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) care, including abortion information and services, has become even more challenging and inequitable during the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns (quarantines) globally and in Australia. [1][2][3] We undertook an audit of routinely collected Talkline data (Talkline is run by Family Planning NSW and provides free and confidential SRH information and advice for community members and health professionals in New South Wales (NSW), Australia) to compare enquiries regarding abortion care before and during the pandemic to better understand the changes in the nature of the calls and demographics of callers.Call enquiries and self-reported demographics of callers were extracted from the Talkline database between January 2019 and December 2021. No identifiable information is recorded in this database. We defined 'before the COVID-19 pandemic' as 1 January 2019 to 10 March 2020, and 'during the COVID-19 pandemic' as 11 March 2020, when the World Health Organization announced the COVID-19 pandemic, to 31 December 2021, when the data collection for this paper was completed.