Provider Availability, Race, and Abortion Demand

Abstract

Variations in the availability of abortion providers may impact the demand for abortions since greater provider availability reduces the travel cost associated with obtaining an abortion. This paper applies a fertility‐control model to estimate the responsiveness of abortion demand to travel‐cost variations using individual data from all births and abortions of women over age 20 in the state of Texas for 1993. The probability that a pregnant woman chooses an abortion appears to be sensitive to availability‐induced variations in the travel cost of abortion services. Controlling for the endogeneity of travel distance, the results suggest that pregnant women who reside in counties with longer travel distances to the nearest abortion provider have lower probabilities of aborting their pregnancies than women in counties closer to abortion providers. Simulations show that changes in travel distance will have relatively large impacts on overall abortion rates and, furthermore, that these effects vary across race. In addition, these simulations show substantial differences by race in the effects of changes in other explanatory variables.