Freestanding abortion clinics: services, structure, fees

In 1981, The Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), in collaboration with the National Abortion Federation (NAF), conducted a survey of 240 abortion clinics to update information about clinic structure and the relationship of structural characteristics to services, policies and fees. The clinics surveyed were a stratified random sample of all non-hospital abortion facilities that provided 400 or more abortions in the United States in 1980. Among the findings are the following: Thirty-one percent of the clinics reported that they are nonprofit or tax-exempt corporations. The nonprofit clinics are not significantly different from for-profit clinics in either the number of patients they serve or the region of the country in which they are located. Twenty percent of facilities, although regarded as clinics by the AGI for research purposes, define themselves as physicians' offices. These offices are more often located in the West and have smaller caseloads than other clinics. They are also disproportionately located in states with high abortion rates, which suggests that private physicians in these states are more willing than doctors in other states to provide relatively large numbers of abortions in their offices. Two-thirds of the clinics are licensed, most of them by states, but some by cities and counties. Licensed clinics have larger caseloads than nonlicensed facilities, but they are no different in terms of the other characteristics measured in the study, including services offered and fee structure. Fifty-four percent of clinics provide abortions after 12 weeks since the last menstrual period (LMP), and 24 percent, past 14 weeks.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)