TY  - JOUR
AU  - Joyce,Theodore J.
AU  - Tan,Ruoding
AU  - Zhang,Yuxiu
TI  - Back to the Future? Abortion Before & After Roe
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 18338
PY  - 2012
Y2  - August 2012
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18338
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18338.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Theodore J. Joyce
Baruch College & Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Ave, 5th Fl
New York, NY 10016-4309
Tel: 212/817-7960
Fax: 212/817-1597
E-Mail: theodore.joyce@baruch.cuny.edu

Ruoding Tan
Graduate Center
City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016-4309
Tel: 5164170145
E-Mail: rtan@gc.cuny.edu

Yuxiu Zhang
Yale School of Public Health
60 College St
New Haven, CT 06510
E-Mail: yuxiu909@gmail.com
AB  - Next year marks the 40th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.  We use unique data on abortions performed in New York State from 1971-1975 to analyze the impact of legalized abortion in New York on abortion and birth rates of non-residents. We estimate that abortion rates declined by 12.0 percent for every hundred miles a woman lived from New York in the years before Roe. If Roe were overturned average travel distance to the nearest abortion provider would increase by 157 miles in the 31 states expected to prohibit abortion.  Under this scenario abortion rates would fall by 14.9 percent nationally, resulting in at most, 178,800 additional births or 4.2 percent of the U.S. total in 2008.  A ban in 17 states would result in a 6.0 percent decline in abortions and at most, 1.7 percent rise in births.
ER  -