The Economics of Abortion

The entire abortion debate is fraught with subjective opinions. It is very binary for a lot of people; abortion is wrong vs. you can't tell me what to do with my body.

With this brief but profoundly important article, I bring to you a collection of objective economic facts. I believe when you see these facts and look at the abortion topic through a different lens that maybe, just maybe we breathe some new air into the topic and understand what the actual economic reality is for a vast amount of those women seeking abortions.

The source for this data comes from Professor Caitlin Myers via The Pitchfork Economics Podcast and an article she wrote for the Brookings Institute. Professor Myers is one of of 154 distinguished economists and researchers who filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court of the United States in advance of the Mississippi case,?Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.?She is a Professor of Economics at Middlebury College.

Let's dig in, shall we:

The Roe v. Wade era and its impact on women and family structure;

5 US States repealed the abortion ban ahead of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. One of the first pivotal studies to look at the economic impact between legal and illegal abortions observed the birth rates in those 5 states, then compared it to the rest of the country priort to the legalization of abortion from Roe v. Wade. In these 5 states there was a 4%-11% decline in births relative to the rest of the country. The study applied the tools of "the credibility revolution," separating correlation from causation; a Nobel Prize winning award in 2021 for their pathbreaking work on causal inference.

"Levine and his co-authors found that these fertility effects were 
particularly large for teens and women of color, who experienced 
birth rate reductions that were nearly three times greater than the 
overall population as a result of abortion legalization."        

A 2017 study using the this "difference-in-difference estimation" found;

• The fraction of women who became mothers in their teens declined by 34%
• The fraction of women who married as teens declined by 20%- and even larger numbers were observed for Black teens.
• The decline of marriages that were mostly resulting from an unplanned marriage or a shotgun wedding

A further 2021 study found that abortion legalization reduced maternal mortality among Black women by 30-40%, with LITTLE impact on white women, suggesting the explanation that where abortion is illegal, "Black women are less likely to be able to access safe abortions by travelling to other states or countries or obtaining a clandestine abortion from a trusted health care provider."

The state of Mississippi (in the Dobbs case) argued repeatedly that;

1. There is no way to know the causal effect of abortion on people’s lives and
2. There is no causal effect of abortion on people’s lives (ie. there is no causal effect no matter what, even if someone try's to look for it!)

Side Note: The maximum state of Mississippi welfare benefit 
for a family of 3 is now $220/month. It was only recently raised 
from $170/month.        

Professor Myers and the other economists asked what the first order effects were on women's "human capital attainment;" education, acquiring workplace skills, probability of being poor and the quality of the life of the children growing up in very low income environments? They then identified very causal effects from women having a lack of access to legal abortions.

US Abortions in numbers: (Pre-Dobbs ruling in July of 2022)

• Close to 50% of pregnancies in the US are unintended and of those, close to 50% end in abortion.
• 1 of every 5 pregnancies are aborted each year
• Approximately 1% of reproductive women have an abortion each year
• About 1 in every 4 women in the US will have an abortion in their lifetime
• Abortion is safe not rare (Not an opinion but a fact)
• Women who seek abortions are NOT doing so randomly. They do so because they are in difficult circumstances; loss of a job, broken up with partner, experiencing threat of eviction or homelessness.?
• Overwhelming % are adults. 97% over the age of 18.?
• They are mostly mothers- 59%! (This is an important statistic for people to be aware of)
• Half living below poverty line
• 75% are low income people

Post Roe v. Wade world:

“The notion that women experiencing an unintended pregnancy could choose to carry a baby to term without financial consequences flies in the face of common sense.” Professor Caitlin Myer

• ? of women seeking abortions in the dark states (states with an abortion trigger ban) will likely be forced to give birth because they are unlikely to reach providers in other states. About 100k in the first year after Roe v. Wade
• Likely to experience increases in past due debt, bankruptcies

The Turn Away study compared groups of women seeking abortion. Both groups of women were very close in gestational age and had similar trends in finances up until they reached the abortion providers. The gestational group that was just below the legal cut-off had dramatically better financial outcomes compared to those who fell just out of the legal range. At this moment, the women who were not able to obtain an abortion very quickly experienced dramatic changes to their financial status; 78% in past due debt, 81% in bankruptcy records.? This is why they were seeking an abortion. They were already financially vulnerable and knew it would only get worse.?

The US Motherhood pay penalty

• Up until 2017, it was legal in the state of Washington to be fired as a pregnant woman for going to a prenatal appointment during your work hours. (and for many other ridiciulous things)
• The wage differential between women and men before parenthood is not dramatic. New studies find a large portion of the gender wage gap is the penalty for bearing children!

Kleven finds a sharp decline in women’s earnings after the birth of their first child — with no comparable salary drop for men. The cumulative effect is huge: Women end up earning 20 percent less than their male counterparts over the course of their career.

In conclusion

The strained economic reality for a vast amount of women is causing them to seek abortions. They know how bad it will be if they bring an additional mouth to feed into this world; because almost 60% of them are already mothers. With the repeal of Roe v. Wade, we are going to cement women from the lowest economic parts of society into even worse poverty, along with the children they are forced to have.

Somewhat ironically, Professor Scott Galloway posted a graphic this week on his Instagram account about the decelerating birth rates in the US.

The repeal of Roe v. Wade will absolutely screw poor women and especially poor women of color. This is a certainty and I am not sure those US States outlawing it really care? However, for all the other women out there, of some means and beyond, they are eschewing and delaying motherhood dramatically. More and more women are not willing to be assigned economic poverty or low income because they become a mother. Men certainly are not forced into this situation.

Access to abortion is no longer equal in America. There will be, unfortunately, further human rights trespassing by many legislatures who want to outlaw medicines like Plan B. More economic hardship for women forced to give birth who currently can't afford to cover the cost of their own life let alone another.

Instead, if the country put its money, time and effort into reducing poverty of women, especially women of color, you would find less women who NEED to have an abortion. A vast, vast majority of women do NOT have an abortion lightly or as a source of birth control. With less economic discrepancy between women and men, you would find less unwanted pregnancies because when women have access to birth control; it works!

Fix the economic situation for women in the US (and around the world) and you will likely have a huge reduction in the need to have abortions in the first place.

This is a win/win for everyone. Women would have agency over their life and their health because they have access to affordable birth control, childcare, to continue a higher path of education if they want to, to avoid eviction if their partner leaves and stops helping financially and so much more.

Professor Galloway is partially right, we need to make a staggering investment; in women, NOT just treating them as vessels for bringing more children into the world to help out the economy-where currently a significantly higher % of men are the benefactors.