UConn Center for mHealth and Social Media, UConn Institute for Collaboration in Health, Interventions, and Policy, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, United States.
Department of Allied Health Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, United States.
J Med Internet Res. 2023 May 4;25:e42582. doi: 10.2196/42582.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines an infodemic as the proliferation of false or misleading information that leads to confusion, mistrust in health authorities, and the rejection of public health recommendations. The devastating impacts of an infodemic on public health were felt during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are now on the precipice of another infodemic, this one regarding abortion. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization resulted in the reversal of Roe v. Wade, which had protected a woman's right to have an abortion for nearly 50 years. The reversal of Roe v. Wade has given way to an abortion infodemic that is being exacerbated by a confusing and rapidly changing legislative landscape, the proliferation of abortion disinformants on the web, lax efforts by social media companies to abate abortion misinformation, and proposed legislation that threatens to prohibit the distribution of evidence-based abortion information. The abortion infodemic threatens to worsen the detrimental effects of the Roe v. Wade reversal on maternal morbidity and mortality. It also comes with unique barriers to traditional abatement efforts. In this piece, we lay out these challenges and urgently call for a public health research agenda on the abortion infodemic to stimulate the development of evidence-based public health efforts to mitigate the impact of misinformation on the increased maternal morbidity and mortality that is expected to result from abortion restrictions, particularly among marginalized populations.
世界卫生组织（WHO）将信息疫情定义为虚假或误导性信息的扩散，这些信息会导致混淆、对卫生当局的不信任以及对公共卫生建议的拒绝。在 COVID-19 大流行期间，信息疫情对公共卫生造成了破坏性影响。我们现在正处于另一场信息疫情的边缘，这场疫情涉及堕胎。2022 年 6 月 24 日，美国最高法院（SCOTUS）在多布斯诉杰克逊妇女健康组织案中的裁决推翻了罗诉韦德案，该裁决保护了妇女近 50 年的堕胎权利。罗诉韦德案的推翻引发了堕胎信息疫情，这一疫情因立法格局混乱、网络上堕胎虚假信息的泛滥、社交媒体公司在减轻堕胎错误信息方面的松懈努力以及威胁禁止分发循证堕胎信息的立法而加剧。堕胎信息疫情有可能加剧罗诉韦德案推翻对产妇发病率和死亡率的不利影响。它还带来了传统缓解措施的独特障碍。在这篇文章中，我们列出了这些挑战，并紧急呼吁制定关于堕胎信息疫情的公共卫生研究议程，以促进制定循证公共卫生措施，减轻错误信息对预计因堕胎限制而增加的产妇发病率和死亡率的影响，特别是在边缘化人群中。
