A new free, fast and accurate checklist of risk factors for abortion related complications is available to help women avoid unsafe, unwanted and unnecessary abortions.

Organizations referring individuals or clients to the Abortion Risks Factors Assessment (ARFA) form are asked to create and register a referral code with us.

The checklist provides valuable information to both women who are at risk of abortion and those who may be facing an unplanned pregnancy that they plan on carrying to term.

Key Features of the ARFA Checklist Report

As shown in this example of an ARFA results summary, the report provides:

• A summary score and explanation of the degree of risk factors identified

• A hyperlink to OptionLine.org for supportive assistance

• Hyperlinks to research linking negative mental health outcomes to the identified risk factors

• An explanation of why these factors are critical to an evidence-based risk versus benefits assessment

• A warning that abortion providers do not typically provide such risk assessments

• A recommendation, if they continue to seek an abortion, to ask the abortion provider to review these risk factors and to assure them, in writing, that the benefits of abortion exceed any such risks (which abortion providers will refuse to do)

• Information about abortion pill reversal

• An invitation to participate in a longitudinal study examining the short- and long-term psychosocial effects of seeking or declining an abortion.

How You Can Help

Sidewalk counselors can distribute the ARFA form using our business card template or as a two-sided flyer.  These can be redesigned to suit your needs but should include a QR code with your own referral code to encourage the preferred option of respondents completing the form online.

Pregnancy centers are encouraged to have one or more links to the form saved on a laptop or tablet that can be completed by the client while she is still on-site.  The results are also easily printed out and can be discussed with the client and given to the client before she leaves.

We also ask pregnancy centers to provide this risk assessment even to clients who are at lower risk of seeking an abortion.  This will not only allow us to undertake comparison studies regarding risk factors among women who do not have abortions but will also facilitate recruitment of women for longitudinal studies comparing women who have abortions to women who carry to term.

This data will also help to document how pregnancy center clients appreciate the help they are given, such as in our previous welcomed pregnancies study.  The referral codes used by pregnancy centers should be modified to reflect your own assessments of abortion risk.

Where to Report Your Experience with ARFA

Please complete this ARFA feedback form if you have recommendations, or stories to report of women who were helped by completing the abortion risk assessment.

Read and share online Abortion Risk Factors Self-Assessment Form Can Save Lives.