Recently, the role of abortion access in the workplace and the field of I-O psychology has been highlighted, but little published research explicitly tackles the impacts of abortion care from an organizational psychology perspective. We examine the potential impacts of further restrictions on abortion access within the context of people’s relationships with employment and workplaces. We focus our discussion on three significant mechanisms that may further restrict access to abortion depending on the degree to which they are enforced or enacted: restriction of abortion medication and equipment shipping, limiting federal funding for organizations that facilitate abortion access, and fetal personhood laws. Further restriction of abortion access may create significant challenges for organizational decision makers, employees, and healthcare workers. Together, these changes to the experience of work necessitate shifts in research and practice within the field of I-O psychology. I-O researchers and practitioners must work together to facilitate organizational functioning and employee well-being through these changes by becoming and staying informed about organizational benefit policies and reproductive care-related practices and their impact on employees, employee career trajectories and distress related to unwanted pregnancy, and moral injury and other challenges faced by healthcare workers.

Pronatalist policies are on the rise in many countries. These have stemmed from several motivators, including economic concerns, nationalism, and promotion of traditional family values. As global fertility rates have fallen, many countries have instilled pronatalist policies to encourage people to have more children. In other countries, including the United States, religious traditionalism and nationalist forces have fueled pronatalist policies as a counter to improved female empowerment and global immigration. No matter the stated motivation, government-sanctioned pronatalism overtly leads to reproductive coercion or covertly results in limited reproductive autonomy as collateral damage. Herein, we review global examples of prior and current pronatalist policies, outlining the motivators for their promotion within each case. We demonstrate how these policies are not only ineffective, but are dangerous to the health and well-being of women and other populations and are in direct conflict with modern reproductive goals, reproductive justice, and decades of efforts towards achieving gender parity.

During pregnancy, colonization by genital mycoplasmas may be associated with adverse outcomes. This study was conducted to investigate the prevalence of four species of Mollicutes (Mycoplasma hominis, Mycoplasma genitalium, Ureaplasma parvum, and Ureaplasma urealyticum) in pregnant women receiving high-risk prenatal care and to evaluate possible associated factors. Data collection included the application of a questionnaire and the collection of cervical swabs from pregnant women. Species identification was performed by real-time PCR. The overall prevalence of Mollicutes was 60.97%. 55.9% of pregnant women were colonized by Ureaplasma spp., and 19.51% by Mycoplasma spp. The prevalence rates by species were 48.78% for U. parvum, 11.59% for U. urealyticum, 18.9% for M. hominis, and 1.22% for M. genitalium. Age, 12 years of schooling or more, age at first sexual intercourse up to 14 years, third trimester of pregnancy, having undergone infertility treatment, presence of STI, and groin lymph nodes were associated with a higher prevalence of microorganisms. The results presented are of utmost importance for understanding the prevalence of these microorganisms, the characteristics of colonized pregnant women, and planning screening strategies and interventions that minimize the negative impacts of these infections.

The early 1970s was a tumultuous time for abortion law and policy in North Dakota where the defeat of an abortion liberalization initiative in 1972 was quickly followed by Roe v. Wade in 1973. The resulting political and cultural circumstances strongly favored the North Dakota Right to Life Association, which saw much of its agenda passed by the legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support. This study uses a political culture perspective to examine the development of North Dakota abortion law and policy in the years after Roe. It illustrates how the state legislature, interest groups, the bureaucracy, and the courts reacted to a series of disruptions in abortion policy. The resulting policies made abortion a continuing source of tension within North Dakota politics.

In 2015 the UK government abolished means-tested child-related social security payments to households for third or subsequent children born from April 2017 (the ‘two-child limit’). From 2017 to 2021 there was a sustained increase in the number of abortions annually in England, following a previously flat trend. Using abortion-level microdata from the Department for Health and Social Care, we analysed whether this increase was primarily among women with two or more existing children in more deprived areas, consistent with being a response to the two-child limit. Descriptive analysis and interrupted time series modelling showed that the increase in numbers of abortions over time was not associated with having more children or living in more deprived areas. Instead, from 2017 onwards the previously declining trend among people with no or one previous births reversed. The pattern of change at area level was nearly identical across deciles of the Index of Multiple Deprivation. The cumulative impoverishing effects of austerity may affect abortion decision-making in England generally, but the two-child limit specifically is not associated with the change that followed its introduction. The primary drivers of recent increases in abortions may be non-material, such as uncertainty about the future beyond immediate financial considerations.

The Supreme Court of the United States’ (SCOTUS) decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization removed the federal right to an abortion, thereby entrusting the states to decide the fate of women’s reproductive health care policies. The outcome activated pro-choice and pro-life groups in efforts to secure favorable policies in states. One tool that groups have utilized to gain support for their position involves selective framing of women’s reproductive policies, including careful selection of wording employed in popular referenda. Using a survey experiment, this study investigates how word/phrase choice influences support for women’s reproductive policies. Two general findings stand out. First, word/phrase choices significantly impact aggregate levels of support for policies. Second, predictor variables exhibit non-static relationships with support across statements. For example, some gender gaps were evident in support for general statements and pro-choice-leaning statements but absent for specific statements and pro-life-framed statements. These findings hold implications for elections on reproductive health policies.

The United Kingdom was the first country to legalize the refusal to provide health care in the name of “conscientious objection”, allowing doctors to refuse to provide abortions based on personal or religious beliefs.

A historical review into the origins and motivation behind the “conscientious objection” clause in the 1967 Abortion Act found that Parliamentarians and the medical profession wanted to preserve doctors’ authority over patients, protect objecting doctors from liability, and appease religious anti-abortion beliefs.

These factors point to an unprincipled basis for the introduction of “conscientious objection” into healthcare, which ultimately came at the expense of patients’ rights and health. The “conscience clause” also represented a negation of basic ethical directives in medical practice including patient autonomy and physicians’ fiduciary duty to patients. The term “conscientious objection”— borrowed from the military but misapplied to healthcare — helped mask the practice as a moral “right” of doctors, even while it disregarded patients’ health and dignity.

Refusing to provide treatment on the basis of “conscience” is harmful and discriminatory, and should be phased out gradually using disincentives and other measures to encourage objectors to choose other fields.

In response to “Origin of ‘Conscientious Objection’ in Health Care: How Care Denials Became Enshrined into Law Because of Abortion,” in which Christian Fiala, Joyce Arthur, and Amelia Martzke trace the origins of “conscientious objection” (CO) policy, this commentary looks at the implications of their arguments for large religious health systems where CO disingenuously constrains care. Within such health institutions, the constraints on standard obstetric care reflect the conscience of bishops who write religious policy, not the beliefs of providers who must implement them, or the patients subject to them.

We take a deep dive into the sponsorship and cosponsorship activity of Republicans in the US House of Representatives from 1993–2014 to examine how ideology and gender influence the policy priorities of Republican legislators on issues associated with women, as well as on the party-owned issue of tax policy. We expect that Republican women are cross-pressured since assumptions about their policy expertise as women conflict with the policy reputation of the Republican Party. As a result, Republican women’s policy choices are impacted by their ideology in a way that is different from their male counterparts. Moreover, our analysis of which members’ bills move through the legislative process demonstrates that beyond their own policy preferences, women are strategic party actors. Thus, women are only more likely to see action on their women-focused and anti-abortion proposals, the two areas that define the partisan divide over women’s place in society.