Determinants of demand: Method selection and provider preference among United States women seeking abortion services.

Access to abortion services in the United States has become increasingly constrained over the past decade. Medication abortion has the potential to increase abortion availability, primarily through new provider networks, but without a better understanding of how and why women make decisions regarding both their abortion method and provider, expansion efforts may be misguided and valuable resources wasted. An exploratory study was undertaken to investigate method and provider preferences. Semi-structured one-onone interviews were conducted with 205 abortion clients at Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa clinics. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were carried out. Stigmatization of abortion is a driving force in how women make abortion-related decisions; this may help to explain why the majority of participants would not have wanted to obtain their abortion from their regular provider and many women were not even comfortable discussing the topic of abortion with them. Continuity with one's regular provider was not deemed important or desired by the majority of study participants. Two of the main reasons given for preferring the clinic over the private doctor were confidentiality and privacy; keeping the abortion a secret from one's parents was paramount for some of the younger participants. Study participants also discussed the lack of privacy in small town communities and related fears of confidential ities being breached as reasons for preferring the clinic setting. Travel time was not a predictor of preferring one's regular doctor over the clinic. Method selection was primarily based on process characteristics including duration of procedure or clinic visit, location (clinic vs. home), level of invasiveness, and pain. Many abortion clients feel strongly about their method of choice, and method preference was shown to trump any interest in one's regular doctor for the majority of women. Unexpectedly, participants who chose the aspiration procedure were more likely to have previous knowledge about the medication method than those choosing a medication abortion. Women at greater gestational age were more likely to choose aspiration over medication, even at 8 weeks or less. One quarter of participants claimed to have insurance that would cover abortion services, the vast majority of whom planned to use it.Ph.D.Health and Environmental SciencesObstetricsPublic healthUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/126968/2/3287632.pd

Measurement of the D+D^+- Meson Production Cross Section at Low Transverse Momentum in ppˉp\bar{p} Collisions at s=1.96\sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV

International audienceWe report on a measurement of the D+-meson production cross section as a function of transverse momentum (pT) in proton-antiproton (pp¯) collisions at 1.96 TeV center-of-mass energy, using the full data set collected by the Collider Detector at Fermilab in Tevatron Run II and corresponding to 10  fb-1 of integrated luminosity. We use D+→K-π+π+ decays fully reconstructed in the central rapidity region |y|<1 with transverse momentum down to 1.5  GeV/c, a range previously unexplored in pp¯ collisions. Inelastic pp¯-scattering events are selected online using minimally biasing requirements followed by an optimized offline selection. The K-π+π+ mass distribution is used to identify the D+ signal, and the D+ transverse impact-parameter distribution is used to separate prompt production, occurring directly in the hard-scattering process, from secondary production from b-hadron decays. We obtain a prompt D+ signal of 2950 candidates corresponding to a total cross section σ(D+,1.5<pT<14.5  GeV/c,|y|<1)=71.9±6.8(stat)±9.3(syst)  μb. While the measured cross sections are consistent with theoretical estimates in each pT bin, the shape of the observed pT spectrum is softer than the expectation from quantum chromodynamics. The results are unique in pp¯ collisions and can improve the shape and uncertainties of future predictions