Research on Abortion Laws and Women’s Wellbeing

My name is Cynthia Boaz and I am Professor of Political Science at Sonoma State University. We are living in strange and frightening times for women’s rights. For nearly two years, I have been conducting research on the links between abortion access and overall wellbeing for women across the United States. I interviewed several dozen women in 2021 and am now looking for new participants for this project. If you have had an abortion in the last twenty years in one of the states of the US, are at least 18 years of age, and speak English, I would love to talk to you about your experiences and perspectives seeking an abortion in your state. I ask you to please consider participating in this important project. My goals are to better understand 1) the extent to which women consider abortion access to be an essential form of healthcare and 2) to what extent there is a relationship between the accessibility of abortion and overall well-being.

If you meet the criteria and consent to participate, you will be asked to partake in a one-on-one interview with me via Zoom. The whole process will take approximately one hour, and you will be eligible for $100 remuneration. I will protect both your privacy and the confidentiality of your responses, and any reporting of data provided by you will be both anonymous and aggregated (i.e. reported alongside results from other participants.) If you have any questions about this, I will be happy to explain how I protect your identity. Please feel free to contact me for a detailed explanation.

If you are interested in participating or have any questions, please email me at boazc@sonoma.edu or leave me a voice message at 707-583-1690. I look forward to hearing from you.

If you are interested in knowing more about me and my work, here is a link to some additional information on my faculty webpage. Here also is a link to more information about this project, including a .pdf of a paper presented to the Midwest Political Science Association.

If you have a question about your rights as a human subject contact irb@sonoma.edu or phone 707.664.2066. 

This research (IRB #3195) has been reviewed and approved by Sonoma State University’s Institutional Review Board.