Restrictive abortion laws and parental involvement of emergency contraceptives

The U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion recognized that states have the right to regulate the procedure. The Court ruled that, during the first trimester of pregnancy, states could not enact any laws that restricted a woman's access to an abortion. During the second trimester, states could enact laws regulating abortion access, but only if the law had a compelling interest in protecting a pregnant woman's maternal health. During the third trimester, when the fetus is viable, states could enact laws restricting or even prohibiting abortions provided there was a medical exception to protect the life or health of the pregnant woman.

In 1992, the Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey rejected Roe's rigid trimester pregnancy framework of state abortion regulation and replaced it with the “undue burden” standard. The Court declared that states could impose restrictions on a woman's access to an abortion provided that the state law or regulation did not have “… the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus.”

Restrictive state abortion laws may influence the likelihood of women terminating an unintended pregnancy in two ways. First, restrictive abortion laws increase the financial costs (e.g., out-of-pocket expenses on travel and accommodations, the price of the abortion procedure, lost work time, and childcare expenses) and the emotional costs (e.g., guilt, psychological trauma, remorse, regret, and humiliation) incurred by women seeking an abortion. Second, restrictive abortion laws may decrease the availability of abortion services by reducing the number of abortion providers resulting in an increase in both women's search costs in locating an abortion provider and the time costs associated with obtaining an abortion. The more restrictive the abortion law, the more costly the abortion. If abortions become more costly, women will have fewer of them.

Researchers from a number of academic disciplines have examined the impact various restrictive state abortion laws have on the demand for abortion. Since the demand for abortion is a function of unintended pregnancy, the ideal variable to study is the incidence of unintended pregnancies that result in an abortion. Either of two different dependent variables can be analyzed: the abortion ratio (the number of abortions of unintended pregnancies per 1000 unintended pregnancies) or the abortion rate (the number of abortions of unintended pregnancies per 1000 women of childbearing ages 15-44 years). Conceptually, these are two different variables. The abortion ratio measures the likelihood that an unintended pregnancy will result in an abortion (i.e., the abortion ratio considers only those women who have an unintended pregnancy). The abortion rate measures the likelihood that women of childbearing age have an unintended pregnancy and that unintended pregnancy is terminated (i.e., the abortion rate considers all women of childbearing age: those who are not sexually active and those who are sexually active and practice safe or unsafe sex).

No studies have examined the effect restrictive abortion laws have on women's unintended ...