Defunding Planned Parenthood Led to More Teen Abortions and Unintended Pregnancies

[NeoGreen]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/07/13/defunding-planned-parenthood-led-to-more-teen-abortions-and-unintended-pregnancies/

Defunding Planned Parenthood Led to More Teen Abortions and Unintended Pregnancies
July 13, 2017 by David G. McAfee

Donald Trump and other Republicans are trying to defund Planned Parenthood nationwide, but Texas has already gone down that road and it ended with — wait for it — more teen abortions in the state.

When Texas slashed the budget for family planning services and shut down most of its Planned Parenthood health clinics, the result was a nearly five percent increase in teen abortions. Who could have predicted this? Well, just about every person who supports Planned Parenthood.

The controversial data comes from a new study by Miami University economics professor Analisa Packham and published in the Journal of Health Economics.

Although the primary stated objective of the funding cuts was to decrease abortion incidence, I find little evidence that reducing family planning funding achieved this goal… The results indicate that the funding cuts increased abortion rates by 4.9 percent 1-2 years after the funding cuts and 3.1 percent over three years.



The author of the study said more research would need to confirm the causal relationship between the funding cuts and increased abortion rates, but that a much clearer case can be made for the rise in unintended teen pregnancies. They rose by about 3.4 percent after Texas cut family planning funds.

This paper analyzes the effects of defunding family planning services on teen birth rates. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I estimate that decreasing funding for family planning in Texas by 67 percent led to an increase in the teen birth rate by 3.4 percent.

The research also shows how ineffective the Texas policies have been from a financial perspective.

Given that the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy estimates that the average cost of teen childbearing to taxpayers is nearly $27,000 per birth, the estimated costs of the reduction in family planning funding are $81 mil, although this figure does not account for births to older women or births that occurred more recently. Therefore the costs of unintended pregnancy caused by the policy change outweigh the $73 million budget cuts.

The author of the study added that similar funding cuts to family planning services “can have consequences that increase costs for the public sector” anywhere.