They went through a lengthy screening process at the beginning to determine whether they were physically suitable for the study and understood the risk involved in the complicated procedure. At the second visit, they spent at least four hours in the doctor's office cramping and bleeding and waiting to abort while medical personnel monitored their progress and gave them reassurances about the symptoms they were experiencing. Women met with clinic personnel for an extended period again to confirm their abortions and take the acceptability survey. Whether women can expect that level of attention outside the confines of clinical study is questionable, however. Under any circumstances, this high degree of familiarity is not conducive to objectivity.
Several things are worth noting here.
First, this was a group of women already predisposed towards any proposed alternative to surgical abortion. This bias was, certainly for many of them, the very basis for their initial decision to participate in the trial. This claim is at once telling and disturbing. Whether this is a conscious obfuscation or not is unclear, but it is a psychologically significant recasting. In surgical abortion, a woman must consciously commit to an active external intervention.