Findings:

- Abortions ↓, births ↑

- Labor force participation ↓

- Debt burdens ↑

- Income inequality ↑

- Housing insecurity ↑

- Property crime ↑ (burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft)

We exploit a natural experiment: clinic closures in Texas after HB-2 (2013) that sharply increased travel distances to the nearest abortion provider.

This lets us study how access shocks affect reproductive behavior, household economic well-being, and public safety.

And I'm going to shamelessly present my very first Sankey diagram (showing flows of OBGYNS between states). Thanks to the awesome bsky.app/profile/asja... for the Stata Sankey package used to make it!

The effects of bans don't appear to decrease after shield laws came online and expanded telehealth access. One explanation is that people substitute from driving to telehealth abortion. The populations who are “trapped” by distance might not be reached by shield law provision. [9/10]

Black and Hispanic women, unmarried women, and less educated women are the most affected by abortion bans. [8/10]

We throw fancier models at the data and essentially see the same thing: distance and appointment availability mediate the effects of abortion bans. [7/10]

Within ban states, births increased the most where distances increased the most. The effects were additionally mediated by appointment availability in the destination. [6/10]

We use a county-level analysis to learn who is most affected by the bans. Texas’ ban left Houstonians with a 600-mile drive to Kansas, where appointment availability was constrained. But residents of El Paso had less than 30 miles to drive to New Mexico, where appointments were available. [5/10]

These abortion numbers don't capture abortion pills being mailed into these states. With incomplete abortion surveillance, we turn to births and see a corresponding pattern, suggesting that everyone who wanted an abortion was not finding a way to get one. [4/10]

We use estimates of state resident abortions from @imaddowzimet.bsky.social to show that the national rise in abortions is driven by increases in abortions in states where abortion access expanded after Dobbs. Meanwhile, resident abortions fell in states that restricted access. [3/10]

Despite post-Dobbs bans, abortions actually increased 11% in 2023. Do abortion bans actually stop anyone from getting abortions? [2/10] www.guttmacher.org/2024/03/desp...

The effects of abortion bans vary tremendously across counties and demographic groups. New @nber.org working paper with Daniel Dench and @mayrapinedat.bsky.social. [1/10] www.nber.org/papers/w33548