# Reddit After Roe: A Computational Analysis of Abortion Narratives and Barriers in the Wake of Dobbs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.22566 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.22566/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 9 of its 84 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [BERTopic: Neural topic modeling with a class-based TF-IDF procedure](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.05794/) (2022)
- [GoEmotions: A Dataset of Fine-Grained Emotions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.00547/) (2020)
- [The Pushshift Reddit Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08435/) (2020)
- [Crowdsourcing a Word-Emotion Association Lexicon](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1308.6297/) (2013)
- [Community Identity and User Engagement in a Multi-Community Landscape](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.09665/) (2017)
- [#RoeOverturned: Twitter Dataset on the Abortion Rights Controversy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.01439/) (2023)
- [Decoding the Narratives: Analyzing Personal Drug Experiences Shared on Reddit](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12117/) (2024)
- [Perspectives on Privacy in the Post-Roe Era: A Mixed-Methods of Machine Learning and Qualitative Analyses of Tweets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11486/) (2023)
- [Polarization and Morality: Lexical Analysis of Abortion Discourse on Reddit](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.00455/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Beyond Binary Detection: A Multi-Dimensional Taxonomy of Cancer Misinformation on Reddit](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.12383/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization reshaped the reproductive rights landscape, introducing new uncertainty and barriers to abortion access. We present a large-scale computational analysis of abortion discourse on Reddit, examining how barriers to access are articulated across information-seeking and information-sharing behaviors, different stages of abortion (before, during, after), and three phases of the Dobbs decision in 2022. Drawing on more than 17,000 posts from four abortion-related subreddits, we employed a multi-step pipeline to classify posts by information type, abortion stage, barrier category, and expressed emotions. Using a codebook of eight barrier types, including legal, financial, emotional, and social obstacles, we analyzed their associations with emotions and information behaviors. Topic modeling of model-generated barrier rationales further revealed how discourse evolved in response to shifting legal and cultural contexts. Our findings show that emotional and psychological barriers consistently dominate abortion narratives online, with emotions such as nervousness, confusion, fear, and sadness prevalent across discourse. By linking information behaviors, barriers, emotions, and temporal dynamics, this study provides a multi-dimensional account of how abortion is navigated in online communities.