Women’s sexual behaviour is influenced by the cost of having an abortion, new research in the United States shows.
It found that a 10% increase in the cost of an abortion was associated with a 6.5% drop in the pregnancy rate among women of childbearing age (Social Science Journal doi: 10.1016/j.soscij.2007.12.009).
It also found that the pregnancy rate among women of childbearing age, and particularly among teenagers, was lower in states with laws requiring the notification or permission of a parent before a minor can obtain an abortion. However, it found no such association with other restrictive practices, such as mandatory counselling and restrictions on funding for abortion services from the Medicaid health insurance programme for poor people.
The authors wrote that their results “support the hypothesis that women’s sexual behaviour is influenced by the direct cost of obtaining an abortion and to a lesser extent the indirect costs of obtaining an abortion either by reducing the frequency of sexual activity and/or increasing the use of effective contraception.”
Although in the US a woman has a constitutional right to have an abortion, individual states have the discretion to restrict women’s access to abortion provided that the restriction is not a substantial obstacle.
The authors say that states have adopted four types of restrictive laws that directly or indirectly result in a higher cost of abortion: bans on the use of Medicaid funds for abortions, parental involvement laws, mandatory waiting times, and mandatory counselling.
The researchers looked at national and state data, including on numbers of abortions, pregnancy rates, the direct and indirect costs of obtaining an abortion, and income.
Their results showed that women were more likely to avoid a pregnancy as the cost of obtaining an abortion rose. The authors calculated that a 10% rise in the real price of obtaining an abortion was associated with a 6.5% decrease in the pregnancy rate among women of childbearing age.
State parental involvement laws also had a significant effect. In states with such laws the pregnancy rate was lower by 5.4 pregnancies per 1000 women of childbearing age—a reduction in the pregnancy rate of about 6%. The authors say that although the laws affect only teenagers, they can induce a permanent change in risky sexual behaviour that continues through life.
“Medicaid funding restrictions, a waiting period law, or a mandatory counselling law do not cause a statistically significant decline in the pregnancy rate of teens,” the study says. “This suggests that, as is the case for all women of reproductive age, these three restrictive abortion laws represent an insignificant increase in the effective total cost to teens of obtaining an abortion.” The authors also found that a 10% increase in women’s income was associated with a 9% higher pregnancy rate among women of childbearing age.