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INTRODUCTION: A changing legal landscape after Texas Senate Bill 8 and the Dobbs decision resulted in a surge of out-of-state patients accessing abortion care in New Mexico. In one health center, patients undergoing procedural abortion can write entries in a recovery room journal titled, “Tell your story; it may help someone else.” Journals were not developed for research but with the goal of invoking community. Patients can read and anonymously share their abortion experience. We analyzed the themes from journal entries to understand how patients share their experiences to foster community during a time of increasing restrictions. METHODS: We reviewed 74 anonymous narrative journal entries from a single health center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, from 2020 to 2023, identifying overarching themes using inductive content. RESULTS: Journal entries described complex decisions and emotions. Themes included solidarity, autonomy, gratitude, and difficulty of accessing care. People invoked comradeship with words of encouragement and reassured others that restrictive abortion laws should not define their decisions or interfere with their autonomy. CONCLUSION: This study highlights the importance of patient storytelling in improving health outcomes. Developed with the goal of invoking community and shared experience for normalization of abortion care, these stories can help us understand how patients frame the context of their decision to help others. The challenges they present and real-time emotional processing help frame the complexity of this decision and the accessibility of abortion care during the time period of increasing restrictions on abortion care.
Banwarth-Kuhn et al. (Wed,) studied this question.