Access to Abortion and Telemedicine abortion in France: A mixed-method study on why individuals resort to telemedical abortion over local abortion services in France

Project holders : 

• Kristina GEMZELL DANIELSSON (Karolinska Institutet) 
• Hélène PÉRIVIER (Sciences Po, OFCE) 

Research team :

• Hazal ATAY (Sciences Po, CEVIPOF) 
• Rebecca GOMPERTS (AP-HP) 
• Jean GUILLEMINOT (AP-HP) 
• Danielle HASSOUN (AP-HP) 
• Judith HOTTOIS (AP-HP) 
• Marie MATHIEU (Université Paris 8, Cresppa-CSU) 
• Janine MOSSUZ-LAVAU (Sciences Po, CEVIPOF) 

Project description: 

Despite the legal framework, people continue to encounter obstacles in accessing safe abortion in France. Restrictions on terms of practice and delivery sites, increased bureaucracy, persisting abortion stigma, and most recently the COVID19 pandemic, has made access to abortion tenuous for many. In the context of the pandemic, in March 2020, France temporarily legalized telemedicine abortions, extending the delay for practice from seven weeks to nine weeks. This temporary measure was soon removed in July 2020, following deconfinement and normalization. This project focuses on abortion access and telemedicine abortion in France to understand individuals’ perceived barriers of access and motivations for resorting to telemedicine. Within the framework of this research, we examine around 1000 anonymized help requests and online consultations from France received at Women on Web (WoW), an online telemedicine abortion referral service Web between January 1st and December 31st, 2020.

Legal information 

 Poster of the project - June 2021 

In the media: 

• Durant la pandémie les téléconsultations pour IVG ont explosé, et ce n'est pas uniquement à cause du virus, article of Hazal Atay in The Conversation, 22/08/2021