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The Role of Restrictive Abortion Legislation in Explaining Variation in Oral Contraceptive Use

Felkey AJ and Lybecker KM

Following the legalization of abortion in the United States, scholars have studied its impact on a wide variety of factors including women’s educational choices and labor force decisions, abortion rates, and most controversially, crime. Economists have also investigated the determinants of state abortion restrictions, exploring the importance of demographic characteristics, locational availability, and the strength of advocacy groups. Notably absent from the existing literature is an examination of the impact of legalized abortion and the restrictions of its use on the decision to use oral contraceptives. Earlier work established that states with more lenient laws regarding access to contraceptive services by minors have greater pill use, but the impact of the legal framework surrounding abortion restrictions remains unexamined. Using a linear regression model to analyze three cycles of the National Survey on Family Growth (NSFG) data we analyze the possibility that variation in state abortion availability, proxied by legislation restricting a woman’s reproductive rights, may generate variation in the use of birth control pills. It is reasonable to expect that without the option of terminating a pregnancy (or in states where the cost of doing so is higher), that oral contraceptives would be more widely utilized. Our findings reveal that restrictions on abortion funding have a significant and positive impact on a woman’s decision to use the pill. These results indicate that women are forward thinking when making their contraceptive decisions, at least relative to abortion legislation, which suggests that there are important policy implications for increasing health outcomes.