How Abortion Access Can Affect Personal Finances: Author of Turnaway Study

Abortion is an important issue for many voters, especially young women, ahead of the November elections.

Abortion access is about more than politics or health care; it’s also a matter of personal finances, says Diana Greene Foster, a demographer who studies the effects of unwanted pregnancies on people’s lives.

Foster, a professor at the University of California San Francisco, led The Turnaway Studya groundbreaking study of the socio-economic consequences for Americans who ‘turn away’ from abortion. The study followed 1,000 women over a five-year period ending in January 2016. The women in the study had all requested an abortion at some point before the start of the study; not everyone received one.

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The voters came in in November 10 states — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and South Dakota — will choose whether to adopt state ballot measures on abortion access.

Such ballot measures follow a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion.

Nationally, women under the age of 30 consider abortion the top issue when voting on Election Day. KFF survey of female voterswhere 649 women were surveyed from September 12 to October 1. According to the poll by KFF, a health policy provider, it ranks third among female voters of all ages, behind inflation and threats to democracy. research.

Abortion is one of the least important issues for registered Republicans, A said Pew Research Center Survey of 9,720 U.S. adults conducted from August 26 to September 2.

CNBC spoke with Foster about the economics of abortion access and the financial impact of the end of Roe v. Wade.

The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Greg Iacurci: Can you describe the population of women who typically seek abortions in the US?

Diana Greene Foster: One good thing about The Turnaway Study is that our demographics are very similar to the national demographics of who gets abortions.

More than half already have a child. More than half are in their twenties. A small minority are teenagers, even though many people think teenagers are the main recipients.

These are mainly people with a low income. This has increasingly been the case over time. It has become disproportionately concentrated among those with the least economic resources.

GI: Why is that?

DGF: I think wealthier people have better access to contraceptives, even after Obamacare mandated coverage. Not everyone benefits from this. Not all states participate in this.

[Medical providers] still handing out contraceptives. There are twenty states that have laws that say you should be able to get a year’s supply at a time, but almost nowhere is that actually available. The law says you should be able to get it, but that is not the case. I led the studies that showed that if you have people go back every month or three months for supplies, as is very often done, you are much more likely to become pregnant unintentionally. The laws have changed, but the practice has not. Access is not yet perfect.

Also, some people have an abortion when they intended a pregnancy, because something went wrong with their health, with the health of the fetus, with their living conditions. Even contraceptives are therefore not the ultimate solution.

GI: What are the economic findings of your research?

DGF: When we follow people over time, we find that people who are denied an abortion are more likely to say their household income is below the federal poverty line. They are more likely to say that they do not have enough money to meet their basic needs such as food, housing and transportation.

Wanting to care for the children you already have is a common reason for abortion. We see that existing children are more likely to live in poverty and in households where there are not enough resources if their mother could not get an abortion.

[They’re also] more likely to face evictions, greater debt burden if they are denied an abortion.

GI: Can we quantify that impact?

DGF: For example, six months after requesting an abortion, 61% of those who refused an abortion were below the poverty line, compared to just under half (45%) of those who had an abortion. The greater chance of being under the [federal poverty line] lasted for four years.

And based on credit reports, we find that women who were denied abortions experienced a significant increase in the amount of their debts that were 30 days or more past due, to an average of $1,749.70, a 78% increase over their guilt before pregnancy. [average]. Public records such as bankruptcies, evictions, and court judgments increased significantly for those denied abortions, by 81%.

GI: Why is this happening?

DGF: Having a child is a huge investment. The decision to raise a child depends on some level of social support, housing security, and access to health care, and our country is not at all set up to provide those things to low-income people.

GI: Your research took place at a time when Roe v. Wade was still the law. That is no longer the case. How do you expect these economic impacts to be affected?

DGF: In The Turnaway Study, people were denied abortions because they were too far along in the pregnancy, but now you can be denied an abortion at any point during pregnancy, in something like 13 states. So it potentially affects a much larger group of people.

But there have been other changes involving resources to help people travel and information on how to order abortion pills online. So it is not the case that everyone who wants an abortion now carries a pregnancy to term.

A lot of effort has been made to circumvent state laws, and I think The Turnaway Study really shows why. People understand their circumstances and are highly motivated to get care, even if their state tries to prohibit it.

GI: What are the financial consequences that some women in those states may face?

DGF: I’m actually studying the economic costs of the end of Roe and travel [expense]. Costs increased by $200 for people traveling out of state. People were delayed by more than a week.

Under Roe, people could drive to an abortion clinic or get a ride; [after Roe ended,] it was much more likely that they flew and had to use more means of transportation. More than half stayed overnight. They traveled an average of 10 hours. That also means taking time off from work. So it dramatically increased the costs for those who traveled to get an abortion.

There are people who have ordered pills online, but don’t [included] in the study. For those people, costs may have dropped because it is possible to order pills online for less than $30.

But you have to know about it, and you have to have an address, and you have to have internet, and it takes a certain level of knowledge to make that happen. There may be a need for follow-up medical care, so you should be able to receive it.