At a Planned Parenthood Great Northwest rally on Sunday, April 21, Idahoans advocated for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that federal law protects access to abortion procedures in emergency situations, even in states like Idaho with strict abortion bans. (Otto Kitsinger/Idaho Capital Sun)
As the public health and legal effects of overturning Roe v. Wade continue to unfold, researchers have also begun studying the economic consequences of the historic Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that ended federal abortion rights.
In a new working paper from the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research, researchers found that about 36,000 people per quarter collectively left 13 states that enacted near-total abortion bans after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June 2022, reports the Idaho Capital Sun.
The researchers — Daniel L. Dench, Kelly Lifchez, Jason M. Lindo, and Jancy Ling Liu — analyzed address-change data collected by the United States Postal Service between July 2018 and June 2023 in 13 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin. (Abortion rights have since been restored in Missouri and Wisconsin.)
The study, which has not been peer-reviewed and received financial support from the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Society of Family Planning, compared “net population outflows” between states with abortion bans to 25 states that either maintained or protected abortion access after Dobbs. Researchers found that single-person households, typically skewing younger, were most likely to leave states with bans, which they say could have profound implications for those states’ economic trajectories.
The researchers write that if the measured impact of abortion bans continues over another five years, it would have a similar effect on migration as spikes in local crime rates or toxic chemical exposures. They warn that states could become increasingly unequal, with more educated and affluent people moving to states with abortion protections.
“States with abortion bans may face challenges in attracting and retaining workers, especially younger workers who represent future economic potential,” the researchers write. “These population flows and demographic shifts could affect a wide range of economic factors from tax bases to housing markets to the availability of workers in key industries.”
The researchers also looked at states with “abortion-hostile” policies — including states that had enacted bans that were blocked by courts (such as Ohio and Utah), states that enacted gestational bans early in pregnancy (such as Florida and Georgia) and those described as hostile by the Center for Reproductive Rights (such as Pennsylvania) — and found a population loss, as well.
The paper comes at an increasingly uncertain moment for reproductive health access, as rural areas across the U.S. continue to lose access to maternity care; as more OB-GYNs leave states with strict abortion bans, like Idaho; and as fewer medical school graduates apply to residency programs in states with strict abortion laws.
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