This study examines the relationship between state restrictive abortion laws and the incidence of unintended pregnancy. Using 2006 data about pregnancy intentions, the empirical results found that no Medicaid funding, mandatory counseling laws, two-visit laws, and antiabortion attitudes have no significant effect on the unintended pregnancy rate, unwanted pregnancy rate, unintended pregnancy ratio, or the unwanted pregnancy ratio. Parental involvement laws have a significantly negative effect on the unintended and unwanted pregnancy rates and ratios. This latter result suggests that parental involvement laws alter teen minors' risky sexual activity and that behavioral modification has a cumulative effect on the pregnancy avoidance behavior of adult women of childbearing age. The empirical results remain robust even after controlling for regional effects, outliers, and the two different types of parental involvement laws. 1. Introduction One in twenty American women had an unintended pregnancy in 2001 [1]. In 2001, almost half of the 6.4 million pregnancies were unintended and about half of these ended in abortion [1]. The costs to society from unintended pregnancies that end in unintended births have received considerable attention from social scientists. Sonfield et al. [2] estimated that the government costs on births from unintended pregnancies totaled $11.1 billion in 2006—$6.5 billion were federal expenditures and $4.6 billion were state expenditures. Or equivalently, the federal government and state governments spent, in total, $180 on maternity and infant care on births from unintended pregnancies for every women of childbearing age 15–44 years in the United States in 2006. Unintended births also have numerous undesirable consequences including low birth weight, a greater risk of physical abuse and mental illness, and high rates of poverty, unemployment, and educational failure. There is a broad consensus among policymakers that reducing the incidence of unintended pregnancies is an important public and social policy goal. In fact, three of the explicit policy goals of the US Department of Health and Human Services Healthy People 2020 initiative was to (1) reduce the number of unintended births, without increasing the number of abortions; (2) increase the proportion of pregnancies that are intended; (3) increase the proportion of females at risk of an unintended pregnancy who used contraception at their most recent sexual intercourse. Of particular interest to social scientists are public policies that affect the costs to women of risky sexual
References
[1]
L. B. Finer and S. K. Henshaw, “Disparities in rates of unintended pregnancy in the United States, 1994 and 2001,” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 90–96, 2006.
[2]
A. Sonfield, K. Kost, R. B. Gold, and L. B. Finer, “The public costs of births resulting from unintended pregnancies: national and state-level estimates,” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 94–102, 2011.
[3]
P. B. Levine, Sex and Consequences: Abortion Policy and the Economics of Fertility, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, USA, 2004.
[4]
T. Joyce and R. Kaestner, “State reproductive policies and adolescent pregnancy resolution: the case of parental involvement laws,” Journal of Health Economics, vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 579–607, 1996.
[5]
M. H. Medoff, “Price, restrictions and abortion demand,” Journal of Family and Economic Issues, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 583–599, 2007.
[6]
M. H. Medoff, “The response of abortion demand to changes in abortion costs,” Social Indicators Research, vol. 87, no. 2, pp. 329–346, 2008.
[7]
M. H. Medoff, “State abortion policy and the long-term impact of parental involvement laws,” Politics and Policy, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 193–221, 2010.
[8]
L. B. Finer and K. Kost, “Unintended pregnancy rates at the state level,” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 78–87, 2011.
[9]
J. Lewis and J. O. Shimabukuro, “Abortion law development: a brief overview,” Almanac of Policy Issues, 2001.
[10]
T. J. Kane and D. Staiger, “Teen motherhood and abortion access,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 111, no. 2, pp. 467–506, 1996.
[11]
M. H. Medoff, “Abortion costs, sexual behavior, and pregnancy rates,” Social Science Journal, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 156–172, 2008.
[12]
M. H. Medoff, “Nonmarital births and state abortion policies,” Social Work in Public Health, vol. 25, no. 5, pp. 454–469, 2010.
[13]
M. H. Medoff, “Restrictive abortion laws, antiabortion attitudes and women’s contraceptive use,” Social Science Research, vol. 41, no. 1, pp. 160–169, 2012.
[14]
K. Kelly and L. Grant, “State abortion and nonmarital birthrates in the post-welfare reform era: the impact of economic incentives on reproductive behaviors of teenage and adult women,” Gender and Society, vol. 21, no. 6, pp. 878–904, 2007.
[15]
P. England and B. S. Kilbourne, “Feminist critiques of the separative model of self: implications for rational choice theory,” Rationality and Society, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 156–171, 1990.
[16]
P. B. Levine, “The sexual activity and birth control use of American teenagers,” in Risky Behavior Among Youths: An Economic Analysis, J. Gruber, Ed., pp. 167–218, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Ill, USA, 2001.
[17]
S. L. Averett, D. I. Rees, and L. M. Argys, “The impact of government policies and neighborhood characteristics on teenage sexual activity and contraceptive use,” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 92, no. 11, pp. 1773–1778, 2002.
[18]
P. B. Levine, “Parental involvement laws and fertility behavior,” Journal of Health Economics, vol. 22, no. 5, pp. 861–878, 2003.
[19]
B. Sen, “Frequency of sexual activity among unmarried adolescent girls: do state policies pertaining to abortion access matter?” The Eastern Economic Journal, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 313–330, 2006.
[20]
T. Joyce, R. Kaestner, and S. Colman, “Changes in abortions and births and the Texas parental notification law,” The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 354, no. 10, pp. 1031–1038, 2006.
[21]
M. H. Medoff, “The impact of state abortion policies on teen pregnancy rates,” Social Indicators Research, vol. 97, no. 2, pp. 177–189, 2010.
[22]
J. Klick and T. Stratmann, “Abortion access and risky sex among teens: parental involvement laws and sexually transmitted diseases,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 2–21, 2008.
[23]
B. Sen, “A preliminary investigation of the effects of restrictions on Medicaid funding for abortions on female STD rates,” Health Economics, vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 453–464, 2003.
[24]
R. T. Michael, “Education and the derived demand for children,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 81, no. 2, part 2, pp. S128–S164, 1973.
[25]
R. J. Willis, “A new approach to the economic theory of fertility behavior,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 81, no. 2, part 2, pp. S14–S64, 1973.
[26]
Guttmacher Institute, State policies in brief, Guttmacher Institute, New York, NY, USA, 2008.
[27]
NARAL Foundation, Who Decides? the Status of Women’s Reproductive Rights in the United States, NARAL Foundation, Washington, DC, USA, 2006.
[28]
R. M. Blank, C. C. George, and R. A. London, “State abortion rates: the impact of policies, providers, politics, demographics, and economic environment,” Journal of Health Economics, vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 513–553, 1996.
[29]
D. Haas-Wilson, “The impact of state abortion restrictions on minors' demand for abortions,” Journal of Human Resources, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 140–158, 1996.
[30]
U.S. Bureau of the Census. U.S. Census of the Population, State reports, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, USA, 2003.
[31]
S. J. Schmidt, Econometrics, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, USA, 2005.
[32]
R. K. Jones and K. Kost, “Underreporting of induced and spontaneous abortion in the United States: an analysis of the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth,” Studies in Family Planning, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 187–197, 2007.
[33]
K. Kost, L. B. Finer, and S. Singh, “Variation in state unintended pregnancy rates in the United States,” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, vol. 44, no. 1, pp. 57–64, 2012.
[34]
T. Joyce and R. Kaestner, “The impact of mandatory waiting periods and parental consent laws on the timing of abortion and state of occurrence among adolescents in Mississippi and South Carolina,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 263–282, 2001.
[35]
A. Tomal, “Parental involvement laws and minor and non-minor teen abortion and birth rates,” Journal of Family and Economic Issues, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 149–162, 1999.
[36]
R. K. Jones, A. Purcell, S. Singh, and L. B. Finer, “Adolescents' reports of parental knowledge of adolescents' use of sexual health services and their reactions to mandated parental notification for prescription contraception,” The Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 293, no. 3, pp. 340–348, 2005.
[37]
I. V. Sawhill, “Teenage sex, pregnancy, and nonmarital births,” Gender Issues, vol. 23, no. 4, pp. 48–59, 2006.
