Abortion Access and Sex
Jonathan Klick and Thomas Stratmann have written an interesting paper on abortion and risky sex among teenagers. (Download the PDF):
Incentives matter. They matter even in activities as primal as sex, and they matter even among teenagers, who are conventionally thought to be relatively myopic. If the expected costs of risky sex are raised, teens will substitute toward less risky activities such as protected sex or abstinence. In addition to modeling the decision making processes of teenagers, this insight is important in other contexts as well. Many public policies can be improved by recognizing the sensitivity of teenage sexual decisions to costs and benefits.
We study one set of policies in this paper. We show that increasing the cost of abortion for teens lowers the insurance value of abortion. This induces teenage girls to avoid risky sex, which will likely have the effect of lowering pregnancy rates, abortion rates, and birth rates among this group of individuals. While these positive effects alone might not justify parental involvement laws, they presumably should not be ignored in the debate. Behavior is not static, and claims based on the assumption of static behavior are flawed.
Wouldn’t criminalization of abortion accomplish the same thing to an even greater degree? Illegality is a deterrent for all types of behavior teens are apt experiment with. The deterrent then becomes two fold: (1) the price goes up simply because it is now a “black market” operation, and (2) lack of governmental and medical support increases the risk of a botched procedure. Why beat around the bush by raising the price? Outlaw the practice.
[via Marginal Revolution]
- Misc., Politics, Random Bits | Time: 6:55 pm (UTC+8)
Interesting study. Thanks for linking to it.
Comment by Jivin J — November 4, 2005 @ 7:32 pm
Pushing teems towards birth control and abstinence is great as long is it works. However you have a growing number of people in this country who believe they have the right to tell others whether or not they should even use condoms or the pill, let alone emergency birth control (ECPs) or the morning after pill.
I was in a store the other day and watched a store owner refuse to sell a 16 year old girl condoms. I told him he was an idiot, went and picked up the girl and drove her to another store, over a mile away.
We must leave the choice of what women should do with their own bodies up to each individual woman, even if that choice sadly includes abortion.
Comment by That Deborah Girl — January 7, 2006 @ 10:01 pm
I don’t know which side to come down on, but I wanted to make a small point about the proxy variable the authors use to measure risky sex, namely gonorrhea. From teh brown university health website, Brown Health Services,
it seems that gonorrhea of the throat may also arise from oral sex. I believe that oral sex is favored by many teens as a way to have sex while not having sex. as a result, the gonorrhea proxy will be overweighted for the teens (unless, of course the CDC variable has already controlled for that). I think the results might remain robust, however, because they are looking at a time variation, but i didn’t read the test closely. One other problem is that of policy endogeneity… the enactment of the parental control laws may stem from a surge of ‘conservatism’… i’m making this up, but it could follow some sort of rise in teen pregnancy rates which makes parents (voters) keep a closer eye on their kids’ whereabouts. in this case the law does not cause the lower risk, but they are both caused by the same increase in conservatism. the lower risk, then, might arise even if the laws are not enacted OR the enactment of the laws (without the increased conservatism) would not necessarily lead to decreased risk.
in the end, my humblest opinion, is that teens will have sex… the only way to reduce risk is to educate them about safer ways to do it.
Comment by playah Hatah — January 7, 2006 @ 10:59 pm
“in [sic] the end, my humlest opinion, [sic] is that teens will have sex[?]”
Excuse me, but as a seventeen-year-old boy, at an age and of a sex which most people see, correctly, as testosterone-filled, I can control my body and choose to not have sex. Not only that, but a large number of my friends, of the same age and of both sexes, are able to control themselves and decide to abstain from sex until we are married. Now, is this group from a large cross-section of society? No, we are (mostly) in the top ten-percent of our high-school class, participants in positive activities like band, sports, and drama, and religious. However, the most important thing for abstaining from sex is willpower, which is not supported enough in a society where people try to blame their problems on others and not taking personal responsibility.
Comment by Hartley — January 8, 2006 @ 3:58 am
“in [sic] the end, my humlest opinion, [sic] is that teens will have sex[?]”
Excuse me, but as a seventeen-year-old boy, at an age and of a sex which most people see, correctly, as testosterone-filled, I can control my body and choose to not have sex. Not only that, but a large number of my friends, of the same age and of both sexes, are able to control themselves and decide to abstain from sex until we are married. Now, is this group from a large cross-section of society? No, we are (mostly) in the top ten-percent of our high-school class, participants in positive activities like band, sports, and drama, and religious. However, the most important thing for abstaining from sex is willpower, which is not supported enough in a society where people try to blame their problems on others and not taking personal responsibility.
Comment by Hartley — January 8, 2006 @ 3:58 am
Ummm, to answer your question somewhat simply - no. The creation of a “black market” for abortions, which in turn “increases the risk of a botched procedure”, will just increase the number of innocent young women injured &/or killed by dodgy practitioners. I don’t believe I actually have to explain this - causality isn’t to the forefront of most (not all) sexually active teenagers’ minds. Sure it comes down to will power & certainly it’s a shame that we live in a society which increasing shuns personal responsibilty, but punishing those girls (& NOT the equally ‘guilty’ boys, btw) by exposing them to dangerous ‘black market’ proceedures, is not the answer.
Comment by Suz — January 8, 2006 @ 3:52 pm
Ummm, to answer your question somewhat simply - no. The creation of a “black market” for abortions, which in turn “increases the risk of a botched procedure”, will just increase the number of innocent young women injured &/or killed by dodgy practitioners. I don’t believe I actually have to explain this - causality isn’t to the forefront of most (not all) sexually active teenagers’ minds. Sure it comes down to will power & certainly it’s a shame that we live in a society which increasing shuns personal responsibilty, but punishing those girls (& NOT the equally ‘guilty’ boys, btw) by exposing them to dangerous ‘black market’ proceedures, is not the answer.
Comment by Suz — January 8, 2006 @ 3:54 pm
I agree with you Jacob. Abortion is just a backup plan and an excuse for sexually active people to have unprotected sex. But if we outlaw abortion people will start thinking about the consequences, no longer will they be able to hid a pregnancy and murder the results of their decisions. They will have to make choices with more thought and responsibility. In this case one could only get rid of their child through adoption, a situation that would not allow them to hide their non-existent integrity.
Comment by Jenn — January 9, 2006 @ 10:23 am
kudos to Suz, i couldn’t have said it better. and shame on jenn for your sweeping generalizations. abortion is not a backup plan, it is an option. can you honestly say you think all women who get pregnant and their partners are of “non-existent integrity”? we don’t live in a vacuum. making something illegal will not make it seem more real. people will still have sex, women will still get pregnant. most of us already knew the consequences of having sex by the time we’re in middle school. a law won’t change that. women need to be able to make responsible choices.
Comment by Penny — January 9, 2006 @ 3:54 pm
I used to tutor teens in Washinton DC (before I moved away). They know that what they are doing puts them at risk for AIDS (never mind pregnancy), and they simply don’t care. The kids see no hope in their lives, and suicide by sex is just as good as ruining their lives in any other way. Making abortions more expensive or illegal would discourage some teens, but you have to look at more than a person’s age to understand the motivating factors when engaging in risky behavior.
Comment by Cath — January 10, 2006 @ 2:52 pm
uceasrrme
mwhooreep
Trackback by gveez — March 6, 2006 @ 7:02 am
We must leave the choice of what women should do with their own bodies up to each individual woman, even if that choice sadly includes abortion.
But abortion is something a woman (or girl) does to somebody else’s body as well as her own.
Comment by Christina — April 21, 2006 @ 3:03 pm
The creation of a “black market” for abortions, which in turn “increases the risk of a botched procedure”, will just increase the number of innocent young women injured &/or killed by dodgy practitioners.
Will it? If far fewer girls are getting pregnant, then fewer will be resorting to abortions. And the same batch of quacks will be doing the abortions, legal or not. Taking away the threat of prison for maiming or killing the girl isn’t going to make the abortionist any more careful.
Comment by Christina — April 21, 2006 @ 3:07 pm
women need to be able to make responsible choices.
Yes, such as abstaining from sex when they aren’t prepared to parent. Such as nurturing the children they do create.
Abortion is NOT a responsible decision. It’s killing your own child to avoid responsibility.
Comment by Christina — April 21, 2006 @ 3:09 pm