The Economics of Abortion Rights: Beyond Morality

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Alyssa Hurst:

You're listening to RadioEd.

Lorne Fultonberg:

A University of Denver podcast.

Nicole Militello:

We're your hosts, Nicole Militello.

Alyssa Hurst:

Alyssa Hurst.

Lorne Fultonberg:

And I'm Lorne Fultonberg. The Supreme court is set to weigh in on the next big round in the fight over abortion rights. In December, the justices will hear arguments in a case out of Mississippi, Dobbs V Jackson Women's Health Organization, which deals with a law that banned abortion after 15 weeks. And that's before a fetus is considered viable. Paula Cole teaches economics and gender and women's studies at DU college of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. And she is one of 154 researchers from around the country who signed a letter to the Supreme Court, called an Amicus brief, explaining what they call the downstream impacts of Mississippi's restrictive abortion law. Things like how reduced access to abortion affects income, educational opportunities, and professional success. For Cole it's a chance to get beyond the moral argument of whether abortion is right or wrong, and instead use data to inform an important policy decision.

Paula Cole:

I think one of the ways that we've used it here to look at how abortion access changes women's lives is by actually looking at what happened when ROE was passed. And when some of the, what we call repeal States had abortion access before for other States. And so as an economist, it's really difficult for us to conduct real experiments because we're looking at the economic lives of people. So we can't do things the way that the biologists do in their labs. And so we use a lot of data to make casual inference about what's happening. And we've made a lot of advancements in that statistical analysis that we use to be able to compare economic outcomes in States that had abortion access, those that didn't, or when ROE was passed, what happened to abortion access when all women had access to it and how that changed their economic outcomes.

Lorne Fultonberg:

There's been a lot of abortion related news recently. I don't feel like I've heard a lot about the economic outcomes or these downstream impacts of overturning or maintaining the status with Roe V. Wade. Can you explain to us exactly what downstream impacts are and how they might have an impact on women's social and economic lives?

Paula Cole:

Yeah. I think one of the things we know is that if women end up having unintended pregnancies, it really changes the economic trajectory of their lives. So they might be less likely to go to college, maybe less likely to work full time because they have care responsibilities. And in addition to not having the same economic opportunities, they now have this extra cost associated with caring for a young person. And so the expenses of childcare, the expenses of the healthcare cost of giving birth, all of those things add up and really change what their economic lives look like.

Lorne Fultonberg:

There's this line in the Amicus brief that says, "The financial effect of being denied an abortion are as large or larger than those of being evicted, losing health insurance, being hospitalized, or being exposed to flooding from a hurricane." And that was something that really jumped out at me.

Paula Cole:

Yeah. I think it for women that the role of pregnancy in their life really is a major life event. And I think women being able to control when they have pregnancies is really important for their economic security and stability.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Sure. As one of the studies that you cite in there points out that even just delaying a pregnancy by a year and having a child when you're ready a year later can drastically improve economic of extending in income.

Paula Cole:

Yeah. Just that extra time and being able to plan accordingly. Lets you get things in place that you maybe wouldn't have had before, or maybe that year is you're finishing your last year of college, or finishing your last year of high school, or finding access to childcare and making arrangements. And so having that time to really prepare economically for a new child, I think is really important to all parents. And one of the things that's really interesting is that about 6% of women age 15 to 34 have an unintended pregnancy each year. So it's actually a bit more common than we might think, the likelihood that someone becomes pregnant and they weren't intending that to happen.

Lorne Fultonberg:

I was interested to find, mention of studies also that show abortion access improves quality of life for other children in the same family, that maybe they're less likely to experience poverty, or neglect, or abuse, and even more likely to graduate college way down the line. How do you explain those impacts on those children?

Paula Cole:

Well, I think if we add another child to a family that maybe is already feeling the pressure of having multiple children or having a child, that it takes away additional resources from the other children. We know that some of the women who have abortions already have children and they already understand the economic challenges is of cost of raising kids today. And there are aware that another child might be too much for them and their family to be successful. And so I think not having an additional child when you're not ready for, allows to save more for the child to go to college that you already have, or to provide greater resources and support to that child, whether it be time or money that really leads to their success down the road.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Are there any other trends that jumped out at you from this Amicus brief?

Paula Cole:

Yeah. One of the things that really stood out to me was that recent studies show that ROE reduced teen motherhood by 34% and teen marriage by 20%. So using some of those statistical techniques, we can actually evaluate how it's impacted the lives of young women and how important that healthcare option is to changing their economic outcomes.

Lorne Fultonberg:

There are just so many interesting statistics and trends in this brief, which we'll post in our show notes on our website. But I noticed that for a lot of these indices and statistics that younger women and also women of color seem to shoulder the brunt of the impact. Can you tell us a little bit more about why that might be?

Paula Cole:

Yeah. I think there are a couple things at play, but the one at the top of the list for me really has to do with access to affordable healthcare. And we know that younger women are more likely to be uninsured and contraceptive coverage is often included in our insurance plans. But if you don't have an insurance plan, then maybe you're less likely to easily afford contraception and making it a bit more difficult. For example, in Mississippi, who's bringing this case up to the Supreme court, 25%, many young people are uninsured in the State and therefore have a harder time to access the reproductive healthcare that they would need to better manage unintended pregnancies.

Paula Cole:

In that same respect, because thinking about women of color and how they're impacted, it's much the same, that they too have a harder time accessing affordable health insurance because of the larger wealth disparities we see throughout the economic system. And so because we don't have things like universal healthcare where everyone has the same access to reproductive healthcare, we see different disparities in how individuals are impacted by access to abortion.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Right. That affordability issue seems to be huge because it seems like statistically speaking, those seeking abortions tend to be lower income or uninsured, like you said.

Paula Cole:

Yeah. About half the people seeking abortions qualify as low income. And so really connecting it back to maybe if they had easier chance of contraceptive access that maybe we could lower abortions that way, but we haven't decided as a nation to provide health insurance to everyone in that easy, accessible and affordable way.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Paula, we've talked a lot about the costs on an individual level here. Can you explain a little bit more about what the cost might be of a law like this to the taxpayers, to the State, to the federal government?

Paula Cole:

Yeah. Great question. I think one of the things that we know is women are more likely to live in poverty. We often call that the feminization of poverty. And the primary reason they're more likely to live in poverty is because of the care responsibilities that they have for young people. And so we know that women are more likely to use WIC, use SNAP, use [inaudible 00:09:40], require healthcare or housing assistance. And so I think if we allow women to have more choice in their reproductive decisions, it also increases their likelihood of success in the labor market and making them less likely to need support from the State. Because if they're having unintended pregnancies that they financially can't afford, they're going to need assistance from somewhere. And so they're likely to turn to those State run programs and we're likely to see greater poverty in locations where that happens more.

Lorne Fultonberg:

You had mentioned contraception earlier in access to contraception, the State of Mississippi and Thomas Dobbs, who's the State health officer here, who's part of this Supreme court case, they have argued that increased access to contraception that they see in and existing policies have, in their words, obviated the need for abortions. Are they right?

Paula Cole:

Yeah. I think it's really interesting that that's the claim that they're making, that essentially because we have more contraceptive access that we no longer need access to abortion. But the data says otherwise. In particular, we know that, for example, the pill fails 6% of the time granted some of that's because of user error. But again it's not full proof. And as I mentioned before, not everyone has and can afford that contraceptive care because they don't have health insurance that really opens the door for them to easily access it.

Paula Cole:

And I think that there are also often other health reasons why women might need abortion access beyond just preventing unintended pregnancies because of some of the other things that can occur. And so there clear evidence that abortion is a central component of women's healthcare and that having that access today, even though we have new technologies around preventing pregnancies, is still needed for the care of women's wellbeing.

Lorne Fultonberg:

A lot of your research deals with other areas of women's wellbeing, including paid family leave, most notably, which has been a big issue here in Colorado. How does your research and paid family leave intersect with this brief on abortion policy?

Paula Cole:

Yeah. For me, in thinking about the intersection of economics and women's life, I really center the story around how we care for each other and how we care for people. And one of the things that we definitely know is true is that we've asked women to take on more of that care work. They're doing more care work in the home, they're doing care work in the marketplace. And so when we think about something like abortion access or not having access, the likelihood of women having to take on even more care work is really apparent. When I think of something like the paid leave policies, that paid family leave is one of the way we're trying to court women in the care work that they're doing.

Paula Cole:

Unfortunately right now the labor market and within the home, we don't have a lot of policies in place that really support women in doing that care work. So women have really been taking on burden of doing the care work and they've paid for it economically. One of the largest predictors of the gender wage gap has to do with the care work that women are doing in the home and the marketing place. And so that care has really created disparity in economic outcomes for women.

Lorne Fultonberg:

When we talk about the women's place in the workforce and how that plays with sexism and gender norms, what do these cases about abortion in Mississippi, in Texas, what do they say more broadly about gender roles in our society?

Paula Cole:

It really is a story of power and control in some ways, right? That women having control over when they have pregnancies is really central to the choices that they can make economically. And if we give them less control, then they're going to have to take on more of that care work. So in many ways it's really the patriarchy using women to be caregivers. I spent a fitting from women who are taking on those care roles, whether they're caring for children in the home or caring for children in the marketplace. I think a great example of that would be looking at the cost of childcare across the US childcare costs. Around 25% to 30% of family budgets, super expensive. So even if she has a child and then wants to be a worker, the burden of caring for that child is often placed on her. And so it's like, does she make enough in the labor market to cover the cost of the childcare? Or does she have to stay home to care for the child because the labor market doesn't pay her enough?

Paula Cole:

I think where we are in our skills changes that labor market experience, but either way that burden of thinking about childcare and covering the cost of care falls on her. And so when we don't have policies like abortion access or paid family leave, we're really putting that economic cost of caring for children on the shoulders of women in ways that men don't have to shoulder it in the same way.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Right. In that brief, something that, again, stood out to me is that mothers experience this immediate and persistent drop in their expected earnings by one third, like as soon as they become parents. And that does not happen for men, right?

Paula Cole:

Yeah. Men often actually benefit from their employers finding out they're going to be parents because they're looked at as being a more stable worker because they're going to have to provide for the family. Whereas women are viewed as being less stable and less likely to be given some of those same opportunities. And even within that context, like women, before they have children, the workplace is already doing things, assuming that she might, whether the workplace intends or not, it makes that decision intentionally or not. We see that the workplace is just not really set up in a way to support working parents and in particular working moms, because they're more likely to have those care responsibilities in place.

Paula Cole:

And so if we really want to improve women's economic outcomes, we need to make it easier for them to care for children. And reducing abortion access would make it harder for them to have the choice about whether they're having children. And so I would really just look at the data like women are more likely to live in poverty, they earn less income, they have substantially less wealth than their male counterparts. And all of that's connected to having and caring for children. And so if we want people to live good lives, we need them to be able to have stable economic lives and have policies that support those choices for women.

Lorne Fultonberg:

As both a woman and a researcher, what was it like for you to sign on this brief and what is it going to be like for you as this case comes in front of the Supreme court?

Paula Cole:

I think for me as an economist, when I look at the data around how having abortion access greatly improves the economic outcomes for women, it seems to me like a no brainer that we would follow the science and continue to allow women to have this choice in their economic lives. Unfortunately, a lot of the public discussion around abortion access has been more about a moral issue rather than thinking about the economic realities for the moms and the would be children and the families that are impacted by those policies. And so I feel really strongly as a scientist, let's listen to the science, right? We have clear answers. The data is very clear. There's a lot of robust research out there. The research has gotten stronger over time as our statistical capabilities have improved.

Paula Cole:

Like many though I'm nervous that women might lose this choice in how they move forward in their lives. And what we know in particular is that those States where women lose abortion access, it's going to become even more of a financial burden to them to seek that care elsewhere. So that laws of abortion access will fall more on the shoulder of low income women and women of color who have less resources to see seek care elsewhere. So it'll increase economic disparities. I'm working really hard for us to think differently and address those problems. Yeah, I'm nervous.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Do you think as a society, Paula, we might experience any sort of, I don't know, economic whiplash, so to speak, of having no abortion access, abortion restriction and then having ROE as the standards since 1973 and now going back to where we came from?

Paula Cole:

What we definitely know is we don't have the studies to show that yet, right? So that definitely would be something economists would immediately look at. We could then, again, compare, all right, what happens when abortion access is taken away and what does it look like for the States who still have it and the States that don't. And so I think it's difficult from a historical context because not only did ROE usher in abortion access, but we also had so many technological changes around reproductive health care that really opened up the labor market in lots of different ways.

Paula Cole:

Added to that, it became more of a social norm for women with young children to enter the labor market. So that increased labor force participation of women with children and having access to childcare really changed those. So it's hard to say specifically what that might look like down the road, but I would be fairly confident saying that we would probably see a drop in labor force participation, much like we have here. One of the things we know from COVID 19 is that women have been more likely to exit the labor market because of the childcare struggles that are still continuing because of the COVID 19 crisis. And we haven't fully restored that access to childcare that would allow women to participate in the labor market again. So knowing that more women would have unintended pregnancies, they would definitely have a hard time being workers.

Lorne Fultonberg:

I was just going to ask, Paula, if there was anything that we haven't mentioned that you wanted to say or anything you wanted to close on.

Paula Cole:

I think the last thing I would maybe add is just that recognition that we tend to, in the media and popular discussion of abortion, really think about it solely as a moral choice. And I think it's much more complex than that and that we as a society should be having more complex conversations about the reality of what a policy like this means for individual families, for women, for our communities, and thinking about how we can support each other and being successful and what that looks like versus just maybe fighting over who's morally right. I think there's a better solution out there in some ways.

Lorne Fultonberg:

That's Paula Cole, an expert in economics and gender and women's studies. The Supreme court is set to hear arguments in Dobbs V Jackson Women's Health Organization on December 1st. We have everything you need to know about the case in our show notes at du.edu/radioed, plus you'll find a copy of the Amicus brief Cole signed. You'll also see some of Cole's research on the impacts of paid family leave in Colorado and across the country. Alyssa Hurst is our executive producer. Tamara Chapman is our managing editor, James Swearingen arranged our theme. I'm Lorne Fultonberg and this is RadioEd