‘Pro-life’ laws lead to decline in abortions, study finds

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Abortion procedures declined by more than 17 percent during the 1990s, a finding that the Heritage Foundation said can be traced to tightened state legislation.

The decline in abortions during the 1990s—by a margin of more than 17 percent, according to government data—can be traced in large part to state legislation, a study from The Heritage Foundation finds.

According to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the number of abortion procedures—reported by the 46 states that provide such numbers to the CDC—fell from 1,035,573 in 1990 to 854,416. Strong economic growth may have played a small part, the study said, but a more likely cause, Heritage officials said, is the increase in “pro-life” laws—ones that mandate parental involvement, prohibit “partial-birth” abortions, or call for “informed consent,” a practice of notifying women who are seeking abortions about the health risks associated with the procedure before conducting an abortion.

In 1992, virtually no states were enforcing informed-consent laws. None had banned partial-birth abortions, and only 20 were enforcing parental-involvement laws. By 2000, 27 states had informed-consent laws on the books, 12 had banned or restricted partial-birth abortions, and 32 were enforcing parental-involvement laws.

Michael New, a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard-MIT data center, examined information from the CDC and the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit group founded by a former president of Planned Parenthood, to discern the effect of state-level “pro-life” laws on abortion rates, which tracks the number of abortions per 1,000 women from ages 15 to 44 and its ratios, or the number of abortions per 1,000 live births. Among New’s findings:

States that adopted pro-life legislation during the 1990s experienced larger reductions in their abortion rates and ratios than states that did not adopt such legislation.

State laws restricting the use of Medicaid funds in paying for abortions reduced the abortion rate by 29.66 and the abortion ratio by 2.08.

States that adopted informed-consent laws saw the abortion ratio drop by 11.69 and the abortion rate by 0.92, CDC data shows. When Guttmacher data are used, New said, informed-consent laws exhibit an even greater effect, reducing the abortion ratio by 22.46 and the abortion rate by 1.57.

New also considers which type of pro-life legislation had the most impact. Parental-involvement laws appear to be the least effective at reducing the number of abortions, although they are aimed only at minors. Medicaid funding restrictions, by contrast, appear to be especially effective, as are informed-consent laws.

Why the increase in the number of pro-life laws?

New said he believes the number of pro-life laws has increased because of two major factors: the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1992 Casey v. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania decision and the “considerable and lasting gains” pro-life candidates made in state legislatures during the 1990s. Casey didn’t overturn Roe v. Wade, but it “did give pro-life legislators at the state level more freedom to enact laws designed to protect the unborn,” New said.

Published by Keener Communications Group, March 2004

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