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. 2022 Nov 29;10(12):2390.
doi: 10.3390/healthcare10122390.

Examination of the Public's Reaction on Twitter to the Over-Turning of Roe v Wade and Abortion Bans

Heran Mane  1 , Xiaohe Yue  1 , Weijun Yu  1 , Amara Channell Doig  2 , Hanxue Wei  3 , Nataly Delcid  4 , Afia-Grace Harris  5 , Thu T Nguyen  1 , Quynh C Nguyen  1
Affiliations

Examination of the Public's Reaction on Twitter to the Over-Turning of Roe v Wade and Abortion Bans

Heran Mane et al. Healthcare (Basel). .

Abstract

The overturning of Roe v Wade reinvigorated the national debate on abortion. We used Twitter data to examine temporal, geographical and sentiment patterns in the public's reaction. Using the Twitter API for Academic Research, a random sample of publicly available tweets was collected from 1 May-15 July in 2021 and 2022. Tweets were filtered based on keywords relating to Roe v Wade and abortion (227,161 tweets in 2021 and 504,803 tweets in 2022). These tweets were tagged for sentiment, tracked by state, and indexed over time. Time plots reveal low levels of conversations on these topics until the leaked Supreme Court opinion in early May 2022. Unlike pro-choice tweets which declined, pro-life conversations continued with renewed interest throughout May and increased again following the official overturning of Roe v Wade. Conversations were less prevalent in some these states had abortion trigger laws (Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi). Collapsing across topic categories, 2022 tweets were more negative and less neutral and positive compared to 2021 tweets. In network analysis, tweets mentioning woman/women, supreme court, and abortion spread faster and reached to more Twitter users than those mentioning Roe Wade and Scotus. Twitter data can provide real-time insights into the experiences and perceptions of people across the United States, which can be used to inform healthcare policies and decision-making.

Keywords: Roe v Wade; abortion; family planning; network analysis; pro-choice; pro-life; sentiment analysis; women’s rights.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure A1
Figure A1
Abortion Policy Timeline.
Figure A2
Figure A2
Number of tweets Roe v Wade sent 1 May–15 July 2022, divided by state population.
Figure A3
Figure A3
Number of pro-choice and pro-life tweets across 1 May–15 July 2021 and 2022.
Figure A4
Figure A4
Number of Tweets about Abortion, Roe v Wade, and Women from 1 May–15 July in 2021 and 2022.
Figure A5
Figure A5
Number of tweets about Women’s Rights and Family Planning across 1 May–15 July 2021 and 2022.
Figure A6
Figure A6
Sentiment among all keyword filtered tweets, 1 May–15 July 2021 vs. 2022. Percent changes in sentiment categories (negative, neutral, positive) between 2021 and 2022 were all statistically significant with p < 0.002.
Figure 1
Figure 1
Top terms by frequency of tweet mentions, 1 May–15 July 2022.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Twitter conversations about Roe v Wade as a percentage of all tweets sent 1 May–15 July 2022 by state.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Total number of tweets in each topic category from the event-related tweets, by state (1 May–15 July 2022).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Number of pro-choice and pro-life tweets across 1 May–15 July 2022.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Number of Tweets about Abortion, Roe v Wade, and Women from 1 May–15 July 2022.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Number of tweets about Women’s Rights and Family Planning across 1 May–15 July 2022.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Topic categories by sentiment, 1 May–15 July in 2021 and 2022. * p < 0.002 for Bonferroni corrected t-tests comparing 2021 vs. 2022 sentiment.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Network of Roe Wade-related Tweet Hubs by U.S. regions and Sentiment (May–July 2022).
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