Increased Access to Health Care May Decrease Abortions

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/08/increased-access-to-health-care-may-decrease-abortions/261463/



***SNIP

Meanwhile, as more people were benefiting from expanded coverage, the abortion rate was quietly coming down. Many states keep detailed records on all the legal abortions they perform, and Massachusetts is no different. According to data from the Department of Public Health and the U.S. Census Bureau, from 2006 to 2008 the annual abortion rate in Massachusetts fell from 3.8 per 1,000 state residents to 3.6 per 1,000. The findings, first reported in 2010 by Harvard rheumatologist Dr. Patrick Whelan, contradicted some forecasts that better coverage would simply drive up the abortion rate rather than bringing it down.

Not only were these predictions proven false in the first couple years of Romneycare -- they grew even more wrong with time. Whelan's study couldn't have predicted this, since it didn't have the data to hand, but the drop in abortion rates has accelerated even farther in 2010 and 2011:



And that's just the statewide abortion rate. Drill down to specific demographics, and the improvements are in places even more pronounced. Among pregnant teens, for example, abortions fell by nearly 7.5 percent from 2006 to 2008. By 2011, they were down by more than 21 percent.

Now, for a quick reality check: it's possible that the decline in the abortion rate had nothing to do with Romneycare. In fact, Massachusetts has generally performed fewer abortions every year than the year before it going back to 1991. In the 17 years between then and 2008, Massachusetts' abortion rate fell by more than a third, indicating a long-term trend that may have as much to do with politics or culture as it might with Romney's health-care policy. Distinguishing cause from correlation here is next to impossible without writing a book about it.