The maternal and infant health consequences of restricted access to abortion in the United States

Abstract

Since the recent US Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, people across the country have experienced large sudden changes in their access to abortion care. In this paper, I look to the history of abortion access in the United States to inform predictions for this new future. I study the effects of targeted regulations on abortion providers (TRAP laws) on a variety of maternal and infant health outcomes, using variation in the timing of policy adoption across states and a direct measure of the distance to an abortion provider. I implement difference-in-differences techniques across outcomes from restricted-use microdata on the universe of US births. I find that TRAP laws lead to 11-16 % increased rates of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. Additionally, I find evidence that TRAP laws widen existing disparities in adverse infant health outcomes across parental race. These results demonstrate the potentially wide-ranging health effects of restricting access to abortion.

Keywords: Abortion; Health disparities; Infant health; Maternal health; TRAP laws.