Over 1.5 million legal abortions were performed in the United States in 1988. State‐level regulation affecting the price or availability of abortion services may expand given recent Supreme Court decisions. This paper uses state‐level data pooled over time to estimate abortion demand. Using single cross‐sections of state data, past studies find abortion demand per 1,000 pregnancies to be price inelastic and find income elasticity to be positive and significant. The analysis here shows that price elasticity estimates in a single cross‐section are sensitive to the choice of state characteristics used to control for “abortion attitudes” within a state. Ajixed‐efects model design with pooled data gives more robust abortion demand price elasticity estimates. The results suggest that any new state regulations that increase the costs of obtaining abortions will reduce abortion use and increase unintended fertility .
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Gohmann et al. (1993) studied this question.
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