Econometric analyses of U.S. abortion policy: a critical review.

Few social issues in the U.S. are as contentious as the legal status of induced abortion. Thirty years after the Supreme Court declared state laws restricting abortion unconstitutional in Roe v. Wade, 93 S.Ct. 705, poll results suggest that the U.S. population is almost evenly split over whether the next nominee to the Supreme Court should support or oppose legal abortion in most or all contexts. The salience of the issue is arguably among the highest of all national issues. The motivation behind many individuals’ positions regarding abortion policy hinges on normative judgments. That is, many people arrive at their abortion position based on some moral decision about the relative rights of the mother and the fetus. However, there is presumably a consequentialist component to the abortion question that is largely ignored in discussions of public opinion about abortion. This consequentialist component, however, has received the bulk of attention in the social science literature regarding abortion policy. The social science literature on the effects of abortion policy has grown tremendously during the last decade. While public health and demographic scholars had consistently examined the effects of changes in abortion policy even before Roe, there has been an explosion of research on the subject in