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ANN ARBOR – A new systematic scoping review published in Contraception finds that while there is a growing body of evidence on minors’ experiences with abortion, there are many missed opportunities to generate needed data. In addition to frequent, unjustified exclusion of minors from studies, the investigators identified inconsistencies in reporting whether and how many minors were included in studies in which they were permitted to participate.

“At a time when minors’ reproductive rights and access to sexual and reproductive health care are heavily restricted and threatened, robust data on minors’ experiences accessing abortion and the safety and efficacy of clinical procedures is critical,” said lead author Julie Maslowsky, an affiliate of the University of Michigan School of Nursing and the Institute for Social Research’s Population Studies Center. “Minors should be included in studies of topics that impact them, and expectations for full, transparent reporting on participant age should be no different than they are for any other key demographic characteristic.”

The findings extend a research agenda that Maslowsky has been building since she and colleagues launched Youth Reproductive Equity’s post-Dobbs research agenda in 2024.

What the Review Found

Maslowsky and a team of co-authors examined 344 peer-reviewed, U.S.-based studies on abortion published between 2019 and 2023—a window capturing both pre- and post-Dobbs research. Their results, drawn from an initial pool of more than 53,000 records, revealed a landscape of exclusion and inconsistent reporting:

• Minors were not eligible to participate in 126 studies (36.6%), and in 89.6% of those cases, researchers offered no justification for excluding them.
• Minors were confirmed to be enrolled in only 94 studies (27.3%). In another 100 studies (29.1%), it was impossible to tell whether minors participated at all—often because researchers reported only a mean age and standard deviation rather than a full age range, or because they combined minors and adults into a single age category.
• Among the 94 studies that did enroll minors, only 43 (45.7%) provided enough detail to determine how many minors were actually included.
• Across all 344 studies, encompassing more than 36 million total participants, only 406,529—roughly 1.1%—could be identified as minors. The authors note this is almost certainly an undercount, reflecting quality of reporting rather than minors’ true participation.

Why It Matters

The authors argue that this pattern of exclusion and underreporting carries real consequences. Minors face distinct legal and logistical barriers to abortion care—parental consent laws, judicial bypass requirements, and, increasingly, “abortion trafficking” statutes that criminalize helping a minor cross state lines for care. Yet the evidence base needed to understand and respond to these barriers remains thin.

Maslowsky and her research team have advocated for inclusion of minors in abortion research as a matter of both equity and scientific rigor. “Increasing minors’ inclusion in abortion research and improving consistency and transparency in the reporting of minors’ participation in research will help to further grow the evidence base,” said Maslowsky. “This will in turn strengthen the scientific integrity of abortion research, support age-appropriate policy and program development, and advance reproductive justice by making visible a population too often rendered invisible in public health scholarship. We offer guidance for improving both inclusion and reporting of minors in future work.”

The review notes that anti-abortion advocacy groups have pointed to a lack of data on minors as justification for further restricting their access, including in litigation over mifepristone, one of the medications used in most medication abortions. 

“Minor adolescents are capable of pregnancy, capable of being sexually active, and are abortion patients,” the authors write, noting that professional bodies including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, and the Society of Family Planning all recommend including minors in relevant research when appropriate and feasible. 

Minors aged 17 or younger account for about 2 percent of all abortions in the formal healthcare system. More than two-thirds of pregnancies to minors are unintended– more than other groups, and minors’ pregnancies, prior to Dobbs, were more likely to end in abortion than adults’ pregnancies. 

Recommendations for Researchers

The review offers a set of concrete recommendations intended to standardize how minors’ participation is reported going forward:

• Clearly state in eligibility criteria whether minors were permitted to participate, and if not, explain why.
• Report the full age range of participants, not just a mean and standard deviation.
• Report the exact number of minors enrolled, even when that number is small.
• When sample size allows, analyze and present results separately for minors.
• Include interpretation of minors’ results in the discussion, when available.

The authors compare this to expectations already in place for reporting other demographic characteristics like race and ethnicity, arguing there’s no reason participant age should be treated with less rigor.

“There are sometimes legal, ethical, and logistical constraints that can limit reporting on minors,” said Maslowsky, “but in most cases, more consistent transparency is both possible and necessary.”

Julie Maslowsky and PSC alumna Laura Lindberg of Rutgers University shared supervisory roles on the review; co-authors were Renee Odom-Konja of Cook County Health; Catherine Gimbrone of Columbia University; Rosie Hanneke, Shannon Ryan, and Shruthi Krishna of the  University of Illinois Chicago; Katie Wyant-Stein of the University of Utah; Lotte Brewer of the University of Pittsburgh; Olivia Janette of the University of Michigan, and Cambray Smith of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.