Unintended Pregnancy and Abortion Access in the United States

Marshall H Medoff

doi:10.1155/2012/254315

Abstract

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.

Highlights

One in twenty American women had an unintended pregnancy in 2001 [1]
Jones et al [36], using 2003-2004 survey data, found that if parental involvement were required, 91 percent of teen minors whose parents did not know they were patients at a family planning clinic would use over-thecounter contraceptives, obtain birth control prescriptions from private doctors, or stop having sex, while only 9 percent would continue to have sex, but use no birth control method. These results suggest that parental involvement laws may cause changes in the pregnancy avoidance behavior of teen minors that persist over adult fertile women’s entire childbearing span of 18–44 years of age
There is a broad consensus by policymakers that reducing the incidence of unintended pregnancy is an important public and social policy goal

Summary

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. 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 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

Objectives

Results

Conclusion