The Determinants and Impact of State Abortion Restrictions

Am J Economics & Sociology
The Determinants and Impact of State Abortion Restrictions
Marshall H. Medoff
This paper shows that a state's abortion policy is determined by the strength of interest advocacy groups and political forces. The greater the membership in the National Abortion Rights Action League, the percentage of female state legislators and the percentage of Democratic female legislators, the less restrictive a state's abortion policy. The greater a state's population that are Roman Catholics, the more restrictive a state's abortion policy. The paper also estimates the impact abortion restrictions have on a state's abortion rate. The empirical results show that abortion restrictions have no statistically significant impact on a state's abortion rate. A state's abortion restrictions do not significantly increase out-of-state abortions.

Estimating Induced Abortion Rates: A Review

Studies in Family Planning
Clementine Rossier
Legal abortions are authorized medical procedures, and as such, they are or can be recorded at the health facility where they are performed. The incidence of illegal, often unsafe, induced abortion has to be estimated, however. In the literature, no fewer than eight methods have been used to estimate the frequency of induced abortion: the "illegal abortion provider survey," the "complications statistics" approach, the "mortality statistics" approach, self-reporting techniques, prospective studies, the "residual" method, anonymous third party reports, and experts' estimates. This article describes the methodological requirements of each of these methods and discusses their biases. Empirical records for each method are reviewed, with particular attention paid to the contexts in which the method has been employed successfully. Finally, the choice of an appropriate method of estimation is discussed, depending on the context in which it is to be applied and on the goal of the estimation effort.

Anti-Abortion Activities and the Market for Abortion Services: Protest as a Disincentive

The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, July 2000
Cross-section data for the US are used to estimate the effects of anti-abortion activity on the demand and supply of abortion services in 1992. Empirical results show that anti-abortion activity had a signi~cant negative impact on both the demand and supply of abortion services. Using estimates from a two-stage least-squares estimation of demand and supply, anti-abortion activities (measured as picketing with physical contact or blocking of patients) have decreased the market equilibrium abortion rate by an estimated 19 percent and raised the price of an abortion by approximately 4.3 percent.

Citizens' Ambivalence About Abortion

Political Psychology, Vol 23
Stephen C. Craig, James G. Kane & Michael D. Martinez
Recent research has recognized that many people simultaneously hold positive and negative attitudes about important political issues. This paper reviews the concept of attitudinal ambivalence and introduces a survey measure of ambivalence adapted from the experimental literature. An analysis of two statewide telephone surveys of Florida voters reveals that (1) a number of voters have ambivalent attitudes about abortion rights; (2) the amount of ambivalence varies according to the circumstances (elective versus traumatic) under which an abortion is obtained; (3) ambivalence about elective abortions is essentially unrelated to ambivalence about traumatic abortions; (4) voters who support abortion rights are more ambivalent about elective abortions than about traumatic abortions, whereas the pattern is reversed for abortion rights opponents; and (5) extreme views in support of or opposition to abortion rights can sometimes mitigate the amount of ambivalence felt by voters.