EFFECTS OF PRICE AND AVAILABILITY ON ABORTION DEMAND

Over 1.5 million legal abortions were performed in the United States i n 1988. State-level regulation affecting the price or availability of abortion services may expand given recent Supreme Court decisions. Thi s paper uses state-level data pooled over time to estimate abortion de mand. Using single cross-sections of state data, past studies find abo rtion demand per 1,000 pregnancies to be price inelastic and find inco me elasticity to be positive and significant. The analysis here shows that price elasticity estimates in a single cross-section are sensitiv e to the choice of state characteristics used to control for ''abortio n attitudes'' within a state. A fixed-effects model design with pooled data gives more robust abortion demand price elasticity estimates. Th e results suggest that any new state regulations that increase the cos ts of obtaining abortions will reduce abortion use and increase uninte nded fertility.