Disclosure to social network members among abortion-seeking women in low- and middle-income countries with restrictive access: a systematic review

BACKGROUND: Health care for stigmatized reproductive practices in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) often remains illegal; when legal, it is often inadequate, difficult to find and / or stigmatizing, which results in women deferring care or turning to informal information sources and providers. Women seeking an induced abortion in LMICs often face obstacles of this kind, leading to unsafe abortions. A growing number of studies have shown that abortion seekers confide in social network members when searching for formal or informal care. However, results have been inconsistent; in some LMICs with restricted access to abortion services (restrictive LMICs), disclosure appears to be limited. MAIN BODY: This systematic review aims to identify the degree of disclosure to social networks members in restrictive LMICs, and to explore the differences between women obtaining an informal medical abortion and other abortion seekers. This knowledge is potentially useful for designing interventions to improve information on safe abortion or for developing network-based data collection strategies. We searched Pubmed, POPLINE, AIMS, LILACS, IMSEAR, and WPRIM databases for peer-reviewed articles, published in any language from 2000 to 2018, concerning abortion information seeking, communication, networking and access to services in LMICs with restricted access to abortion services. We categorized settings into four types by possibility of anonymous access to abortion services and local abortion stigma: (1) anonymous access possible, hyper stigma (2) anonymous access possible, high stigma (3) non-anonymous access, high stigma (4) non-anonymous access, hyper stigma. We screened 4101 references, yielding 79 articles with data from 33 countries for data extraction. We found a few countries (or groups within countries) exemplifying the first and second types of setting, while most studies corresponded to the third type. The share of abortion seekers disclosing to network members increased across setting types, with no women disclosing to network members beyond their intimate circle in Type 1 sites, a minority in Type 2 and a majority in Type 3. The informal use of medical abortion did not consistently modify disclosure to others. CONCLUSION: Abortion-seeking women exhibit widely different levels of disclosure to their larger social network members across settings/social groups in restrictive LMICs depending on the availability of anonymous access to abortion information and services, and the level of stigma. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12978-021-01165-0.