Parental involvement laws and fertility behavior

Abstract

This paper considers the impact of the introduction of laws requiring parental involvement in a minor’s decision to abort a pregnancy. State-level data over the 1985–1996 period are used to examine abortion, birth, and pregnancy outcomes, while microdata from the 1988 and 1995 National Surveys of Family Growth (NSFG) are utilized to examine sexual activity and contraception. Quasi-experimental methods are employed that examine whether minors’ fertility outcomes were affected in those locations that introduced these laws following their introduction and occurred for minors but not other women. I find that parental involvement laws resulted in fewer abortions for minors resulting from fewer pregnancies; there is no statistically significant impact on births. The reduction in pregnancy seems to be attributable to increased use of contraception rather than a reduction in sexual activity.

Introduction

Since the late 1980s, the teen abortion rate has been falling rather dramatically. After holding steady from 1979 to 1988 at a rate of about 43 abortions per 1000 women per year, it has slowly drifted downward to a level of 25 in 2000, representing a decline of 42% (Henshaw and Van Vort, 1989, Henshaw, 1997, Jones et al., 2002).¹ The decline for minors was even more dramatic. For those 15–17 years old, the abortion rate was cut in half from 30 abortions per 1000 women in this age group in 1988 to 15 in 2000 (Henshaw, 1997, Jones et al., 2002).

At the same time that these abortion rates were falling, states were instituting laws in which minors were required to either notify a parent(s) or obtain their consent before receiving an abortion. Together, these laws are referred to as parental involvement laws. As documented below, 14 additional states implemented such laws between 1989 and 1994 and 7 more have done so since then. The introduction of these laws may have contributed to the reduction in the frequency of abortion for minors by increasing the difficulty of obtaining one.²

Yet, this correspondence in timing does not necessarily mean that the introduction of these laws caused the decline in minors’ abortion rates. Other social forces taking place over this time period may have been at work that led to the decline in minors’ abortion rates that just happened to coincide with the introduction of additional parental involvement laws. A thorough econometric analysis would be required before one could make any definitive statements in this regard.

Interestingly, as minors’ abortion rates have fallen over this period, their birth rates have not increased. In fact, throughout most of this period the birth rate for minors fell as well, starting at a level of 38.7 births per 1000 women in this age group in 1991 to a rate of 27.4 in 2000 (Martin et al., 2002). Therefore, the reduction in abortions to minors apparently was brought about by a reduction in pregnancies to minors and did not seem to result in more births.

This fact highlights the value of evaluating the impact of parental involvement laws at different stages of the fertility decision tree.³ That tree starts with the decision to engage in sexual activity and the choice of a level of contraceptive intensity. These behaviors generate a likelihood of pregnancy; if pregnant, a woman would have to decide whether to abort or give birth. If parental involvement laws reduce the likelihood that minors abort without changing the likelihood of pregnancy, then births would rise. But in response to the law change, minors may change their contraceptive practices or their level of sexual activity in ways that reduce the likelihood of a pregnancy, resulting in fewer abortions and fewer pregnancies, with no change in births. An analysis of the impact of parental involvement laws on fertility outcomes would benefit by showing consistent effects at each stage of this decision tree.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of parental involvement laws on abortion and fertility behavior. I use Vital Statistics data on births and data from the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) on abortions and pregnancies over the 1985–1996 period along with data on contraception and sexual activity from the 1988 and 1995 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). I employ quasi-experimental methods using a “triple difference” identification strategy in which a policy impact is supported if a particular outcome is affected in the states that instituted the policy following the policy change for minors but not older teens or other women. The results of this exercise indicate that parental involvement laws are found to reduce abortions for minors, but not older women, although they have no positive impact on births. Moreover, the evidence provides some support for an increase in contraceptive use, but not a reduction in sexual activity, in response to a parental involvement law.