Child Abuse and Abortion Availability

Unwanted children may be more subject to child abuse and neglect by their parents or care-takers than are desired children, in part because such children may be born and raised in less favorable circumstances that foster maltreatment. In addition, parents may be more likely to maltreat unwanted children; sociological and medical studies suggest a link between unplanned births and subsequent child abuse (Susan J. Zuravin, 1987). Child abuse and neglect may be linked to abortion availability if reduced access to abortion providers leads to more births of unwanted or unplanned children and to maltreatment of some of these children, a possibility investigated in this paper. A variety of evidence suggests that abortion availability affects fertility behavior and child outcomes. Increased abortion availability leads to lower birth rates and higher abortion rates (see e.g., Phillip Levine et al., 1999). In addi- tion, abortion legalization appears to have led to an improvement in the average living condi- tions of children by reducing the number of children who would have lived in single-parent families, lived in poverty, received welfare, and died as infants (Jonathan Gruber et al., 1999). The improvement in child outcomes appears to be primarily due to changes in the composition of women who give birth, with the largest fertility declines occurring among young, unmarried, or nonwhite women. Such nonrandom selection may lead to less maltreatment of children if abortion access reduces births among groups where maltreatment is more prevalent. Alternatively, abortion availability may reduce the number of unwanted children born to all women, leading to lower rates of child abuse and neglect. We use data on the number of reports of child abuse and child neglect to examine the rela- tionship between abortion legalization, post- legalization restrictions on abortions, and child maltreatment rates. The results suggest that le- galization lowered total reported rates of child maltreatment. The effect of Medicaid funding restrictions, parental involvement laws, and mandatory waiting periods is unclear in our results.