The economic impact of the Dobbs decision
How restrictive abortion legislation presents a hypocritical Republican threat
By Grace Brenner
Guest Writer
On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States released its 5–4 majority decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn the right to abortion established by the landmark case Roe v. Wade. Through the deliberate demolition of historical precedent, Justices Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Kavanaugh turned back the clock on women’s healthcare by nearly two centuries.
When taking into account the intrinsic nature of abortion as applied to victims of rape, incest, or domestic violence (who are still barred from the procedure in the state of Texas) it becomes both clear and unequivocal that this decision is a threat to women everywhere. However, the support and the enforcement of this decision on behalf of Republican officials — the same citizens and senators who roll their eyes at rapidly declining American labor force participation — is nothing more than hypocritical.
Increased access to reproductive healthcare will have profoundly positive effects not only on women’s labor force participation rates, but on the American economy as a whole.
To approach this incendiary debate, we must first address the constants. The primary counterargument posed by Dobbs supporters holds that “abortions are not banned completely.” Indeed, they are not. The decision leaves the legality of abortion up to each individual state. In left-leaning states with largely Democratic legislatures, bans are less likely; in states with a Republican majority, bans are more common.
But this is not a win. Not only do these states’ arbitrary terms leave physicians weary of performing potentially lifesaving procedures for fear of arrest. They also force pregnant women to flock to nearby clinics in numbers those clinics cannot withstand. What Republicans paint as a “flexible convenience,” then, becomes a massive barrier — a barrier to young women who cannot afford alternative forms of contraception, and to the teenage victims of sexual assault who now have to give birth to a child before they can graduate high school.
However, these stories of tragedy and loss have been labeled insufficient. They are not enough to alter the opinions of the men and the lawyers determined to maintain control of women’s bodies. We turn, then, to their favorite realm: we turn to economics.
In a country where working is everything, it makes sense why there is widespread discontent in response to gradually declining labor force participation rates. For men and women alike, this level of labor market attachment has fallen considerably since the early 2000’s due to decreasing educational attainment, technology-driven industry shifts, and delays in family formation.
From Fox Business editors’ claims of understated unemployment rates to the complaints of Alabama citizens regarding the “30 minute wait at Cracker Barrel,” it becomes evident that resulting grievances are based disproportionately in right-wing politics.
This piece does not argue that an increasingly stagnant economy is unproblematic. However, it does assert that there are solutions — and that they are being ignored.
If (and when) factors of women’s health, safety, and reproductive autonomy are tossed aside completely, limited access to abortion will still have many repercussions. In a 2021 study, policy fellow Laura Valle Gutierrez for The Century Foundation determined that women’s labor force participation rates were about 1.25% lower in states with restrictive abortion policies than in those without.
For those who claim that 1% is insignificant, let us remember that that statistic accounts for the hundreds of thousands of working-age women who are unable to contribute to the demands of today’s economy, due solely to the adverse effects of early or unplanned childbirth. The damage does not stop there, either. Once these women have had children and are attempting to rejoin the labor force, employers are not on their side.
From prevailing misconceptions about female quit rates and productivity to correlated pay deductions in the form of motherhood wage penalties, why would capable women even want to return to work?
One could argue that the incentive of male marriage premiums — or higher wages awarded to fathers and grooms as opposed to their unmarried male counterparts — “makes up” for the declining market participation of women. This “solution,” however, is not only flawed in its failure to account for the economic inefficiency of the gender wage gap, but troublesome in its employment of injustice as an answer.
The existing pay differential between men and women decreases the supply of female labor by trapping women’s wages at undesirable levels. Coupled with the disillusionment of men (high school and college-educated) in terms of labor force participation, these trends are detrimental to the consumer economy that Americans allegedly take so much pride in maintaining.
While it is true that increased abortion access would likely have minimal effects on labor market discrimination, it is possible that the resulting influx of women to the workforce would have trickle-down effects. In this case, if more female employees are able to retain control over if and when they become mothers, they can work to defy the modern norms that categorize them as detached and unreliable.
Consider the graphs below.
The first, obtained by the New York Times from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project, evaluates the effect of different Texas legislation on the number of legal abortions occuring within the state.
The second, from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, captures the labor force participation rates of men and women from the beginning of the pandemic to Oct. 2020.
While fluctuations in the second model are obviously not the result of abortion policy alone, notice how the trend of the red line almost exactly mirrors that of the grey legal abortion line above.
That pattern is no coincidence. The numbers have already proven that declining labor force attachment is a growing epidemic in the United States, for both women and men. If this low market engagement is, at least in part, a function of restrictive abortion policy, the Dobbs decision becomes just as much a barrier to economic productivity as it is a threat to women’s bodily autonomy.
For those who denounce Roe v. Wade while complaining about the lines at their local understaffed Cracker Barrel: it’s time to choose your battle.
Perhaps the most widespread misconception surrounding the issue of abortion as it pertains to economics is the idea that women are better off without having children at all. That argument is by no means the one at the heart of this paper.
In fact, while women without children are slightly more incentivized to sell their time in the labor market due to decreased opportunity costs of doing so, the same stigmas exist on behalf of employers towards female employees in general. In other words, lower salaries and minimal promotion opportunities stemming from preconceived notions about women’s level of “devotion” to their work are equally common for mothers and non-mothers alike.
The economic benefit of accessible abortion is not that it decreases the likelihood of women becoming mothers. Instead, access to abortion allows allows women to plan the questions of if and when around their already-blossoming careers.
A prominent piece by Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah titled The Economic Cost of Abortion offers a dissenting perspective on this topic: that the “approximately 63 million abortions” taking place since 1973 equate to about 20% of today’s population. Further, he argues that there were substantial economic losses caused by the lost potential of those working lives.
While sensible on the surface, this claim is inherently problematic. There is no evidence that those fetuses would have survived to reach a working age given the lack of clarity and case specifics. In addition, the idea that all of them would have had the economic means to grow up and join the labor force is unrealistic.
Given the barriers to men and women’s labor force participation that already exist, it becomes clear that the number of people willing to work is not the problem. The problem is that they are not being supported.
On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court voted to reject a woman’s fundamental and constitutional right to abortion as previously upheld by the privacy clause of the 14th Amendment. By placing her fate in the hands of individuals like Republican House candidate Yesli Vega, who denounced the procedure on the grounds that pregnancy from rape is “less likely because it is forced,” the Supreme Court has certainly left their impact on female American youth.
Threatening the precedents of privacy and same-sex marriage behind cases such as Obergefell v. Hodges is no small act of an obscene injustice. Conservative circles of the modern era, however — circles with deeper interests in mitigating tax rates or fighting inflation — tend to shift their focus elsewhere. But because restrictive abortion policy has revealed itself as a major catalyst of economic inefficiency, it is about time they pay attention. It is about time they dig deeper, if not for justice, for the motives of work and labor and diligence they live by.
If allowed to persist, the increasingly strict laws on abortion will continue to trap women in vicious cycles of poverty fueled by plummeting labor supply and labor force attachment. Production will proceed at imperfect levels, with loss in the absence of what could be a desperately simple solution: letting women control their lives. And to those who consciously perpetuate markets of missed profits, I must ask: is that not what you fear most?
Grace Brenner is a sophomore majoring in French and Political Science.
