Fertility Effects of Abortion and Birth Control Access For Minors

FERTILITY EFFECTS OF ABORTION AND BIRTH CONTROL PILL ACCESS FOR MINORS* MELANIE GULDI This article empirically assesses whether age-restricted access to abortion and the birth control pill influence minors’ fertility in the United States. There is not a strong consensus in previous literature regarding the relationship between laws restricting minors’ access to abortion and minors’ birthrates. This is the first study to recognize that state laws in place prior to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision enabled minors to legally consent to surgical treatment—including abortion—in some states but not in others and to construct abortion access variables reacting this. In this article, age-specific policy variables measure either a minor’s legal ability to obtain an abortion or to obtain the birth control pill without parental involvement. I nd fairly strong evidence that young women’s birthrates dropped as a result of abortion access as well as evidence that birth control pill access led to a drop in birthrates among whites. previous studies examining the impact of abortion legalization on birthrates have not recognized that at the time of abortion legalization, minors’ access to abortion was limited by parental involvement laws in some U.S. states; and these studies have not considered the impact of a minor’s access to the birth control pill (Levine 2004; Levine et al. 1999). Although the finding of a negative relationship between abortion legalization and birthrates is robust across studies, these results suffer from potential omitted variables bias because they do not account for minors’ access to birth control pills (the Pill). More recently, authors have considered abortion legalization and legal access to the Pill in the same analysis. However, abortion access is measured by whether abortion is legal for adults in the state when a woman is a particular age (usually 18 or 21), and not by whether a minor had legal access to abortion (Ananat and Hungerman 2007; Bailey 2006; and Goldin and Katz 2002). Although these authors have found a negative relationship between early legal access to the Pill and births, the impact that minors’ access to oral contraceptives had on birthrates during this period has not been studied extensively, and the contemporaneous impact of minors’ legal access to abortion has not been examined. Unlike previous research, this study constructs policy variables to measure minors’ legal access to abortion during the late 1960s and early 1970s and examines the impact that minors’ access to abortion and the Pill have on birthrates. Laws changing minors’ access to abortion or the Pill alter the costs of preventing or terminating pregnancies. These cost changes have theoretically ambiguous impacts on birthrates.1 Consequently, to determine the size and direction of the change in birthrates attributable to changes in minor access, data must be examined empirically. *Melanie Guldi, Department of Economics, Mount Holyoke College, 50 College Street, South Hadley, MA 01075; e-mail: [email protected]. I owe thanks to the editors of Demography and two anonymous referees as well as Martha Bailey, Elizabeth Cascio, Hilary Hoynes, Lisa Jepsen, Douglas L. Miller, Marianne Page, and Ann Stevens for insightful feedback on earlier drafts of this article. I am also grateful for the helpful comments from participants of the 2005 Western Economic Association International Conference, UC–Davis Brown Bag Seminar, and Sacramento State Brown Bag Seminar. Any remaining errors are my own. 1. An existing body of literature develops the economic theory of fertility and provides more technical detail (see, e.g., Akerlof, Yellen, and Katz 1996; Ananat et al. 2006; Becker 1960, 1981; Becker and Lewis 1973; Heckman and Willis 1975; Kane and Staiger 1996; Levine 2004; Levine and Staiger 2002; and Willis 1999). When the cost of the Pill and of abortion change simultaneously, the predicted impact on the birthrate is theoretically ambiguous and depends on (a) the cost of abortion relative to the cost of giving birth; (b) the cost of the Pill relative to its expected decrease in the probability of pregnancy; (c) the distribution of these costs across the population. 818 Demography, Volume 45-Number 4, November 2008 It is important to understand how large the behavioral response to the policy is because changes may affect minors’ own outcomes as well as outcomes of the next generation. Recent work has shown that women’s short- and long-term fertility, as well as career and labor force outcomes, are influenced by access to abortion and/or the Pill (Ananat, Gruber, and Levine 2007; Ananat and Hungerman 2007; Bailey 2006; and Goldin and Katz 2002). Additionally, children’s outcomes—such as educational attainment, welfare use, criminal activity, and child fatal injury rates—have been associated with access to abortion and/or the Pill (Ananat et al. 2006; Charles and Stephens 2006; Donohue and Levitt 2001; Gruber, Levine, and Staiger 1999; Lott and Whitley 2007; Pantano 2007; Sen 2007). Some authors have argued that the impact on the next generation operates via a change in cohort size, while others have argued that the impact is due to a selection mechanism (Ananat et al. 2006; Lott and Whitley 2007). Still, others have questioned the magnitude of the effect on the next generation (Foote and Goetz 2005; Joyce 2004). Regardless, it is important to understand how much fertility policies influence birthrates. This article explores the relative impacts of minors’ access to abortion and the Pill on birthrates. Previous work has found that abortion legalization decreased the teen birthrate by 2%–13% (Angrist and Evans 1999; Levine et al. 1999; Sklar and Berkov 1974). Other state-level research shows that laws restricting minors’ access to abortion (beginning in the mid-1970s) had little effect on the birthrate (Bitler and Zavodny 2001; Blank, George, and London 1996; Cartoof and Klerman 1986; Joyce and Kaestner 1996; Joyce, Kaestner, and Colman 2006; Kane and Staiger 1996; Levine 2003; Rogers et al. 1991). However, these authors generally failed to account for access to contraception, and no author has examined the relationship between the birthrate and parental involvement laws that governed minors’ access to abortion in the United States during the late 1960s and the 1970s. This article explores the relationship among minors’ access to abortion, minors’ access to the Pill, and the birthrate. The impact of state law changes on the birthrates of women ages 15–21 is analyzed using a model that controls for age, state, year, and unrestricted state-year fixed effects. I nd that for whites, providing minors with abortion access and/or access to the Pill leads to a reduction in birthrates. These effects are strongest among unmarried first-time mothers. STATE LAWS REGULATING MINORS’ ACCESS TO THE PILL AND TO ABORTION The cost of pregnancy prevention was drastically reduced when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the nearly 100%-effective birth control pill (the Pill) in 1960. Almost immediately, married women began using it to control their fertility. However, unmarried women and minors were not afforded the same access as married women. The age at which a minor could obtain contraception without the consent of her parent(s) varied by the state during the late 1960s and early 1970s. For some states during this period, the age of consent was simply the age of majority; for others, it was governed by a mature minor doctrine or an explicit medical consent law for minors.2 Table 1 shows the number of states where minors of a particular age had legal access to the Pill without parental involvement for each year examined in this article.3 Even with the availability of the Pill, the cost of terminating unplanned pregnancies remained high until legislative and judicial action gave adult women legal access to 2. Bailey (2006) and Goldin and Katz (2002) discussed the legal environment related to the Pill more extensively. 3. The age at which a minor could have obtained the Pill without parental involvement is, in some states, the same age at which a minor could obtain other less-effective forms of contraception without parental involvement. In this article, access to the Pill can be thought of as access to contraception. Therefore, the interpretation of any results in this article could be construed more broadly as access to contraception rather than simply the birth control pill.

DMU Timestamp: January 21, 2020 02:52