National Review points me today to a new study that examines birth rates before and after the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision. The study uses a "pre-registered synthetic difference-in-differences design applied to newly released provisional natality data for the first half of 2023." Here's the result:
The authors note that up through 2022 states which now have abortion bans had very similar birth rates to states that don't have bans. But in 2023 the relative rate spiked up by 2.3%.
The whole "pre-registered synthetic difference-in-differences design" sounds far too complicated for me. So instead I just looked at births over the past three years:
I dunno. If states with abortion bans had higher fertility rates while other states stayed the same, you'd expect higher overall fertility. Instead it's lower. So it's unclear what effect Dobbs actually had overall.
But I'll say a couple of things. First, I don't really need a study to believe that births went up in states that banned abortion. It would be fairly stunning if that didn't happen, at least a little bit. Nevertheless, the evidence suggests that the total number of abortions didn't change after Dobbs.
Second, this is all meaningless anyway. There are far too few data points in this noisy series to draw any conclusions. The study compares only six months of 2023 compared to the first six months of other years. That's nowhere near enough to draw any conclusions. What's more, we're coming off a pandemic, and who knows how that affected differential birth rates at the state level? Any comparison of 2023 with 2022 is all but impossible.
I can believe that red states that have banned abortion are so monumentally unhealthy the general death rate of pregnant women and miscarriages cancels out the increase.
This is a fantastic point. In terms of maternal mortality, the US is a third world country.
PS: Kevin, love the headline.
Perhaps you should find out what a synthetic difference in differences design is. I'll bet it's more sophisticated than drawing a straight line and may well be able to tease out patterns that are beyond the reach of Excel.
Yes. This is a disappointing bit of know-nothing-ism on Kevin's part. Not even the hint of an attempt to find out why a DD might be more appropriate than making up a piecewise regression (without even a nod towards the unmistakable seasonality).
DDs require careful design and can admit of many reasonable objections, but "sounds complicated, so I'll just slap together a naive fit and claim it's better" is not a good one.
“Nevertheless, the evidence suggests that the total number of abortions didn't change after Dobbs.”
If you can scrape together $200* or put it on a credit card, you can fly or drive to a state that allows abortions, or find women in those states willing to mail you the pills to do it yourself. So basically, only the poorest women are banned from getting an abortion. That is horrible, but it probably explains why abortion rates haven’t changed much: most Americans can find $200* if that absolutely have to.
*over and above whatever the abortion itself costs of course. But that part didn’t change from pre-Dobbs.
If Dobbs made no difference, what's the upshot? That pro-choicers have nothing to worry about? That abortion bans are futile? Both?
It makes no difference to wealthy women. But it will increase the number of children born into poverty.
The upshot is that now having realized that state control isn't a path forward the forced birth constituency will aim their sights fully on a national ban. Starting with the pills.
They'll find ways around voter preferences until then.
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy," David Frum
When comparing birth rates before and after Dobbs, the difference shouldn't show up until after 7 months or so after the decision since most abortions are early in the pregnancy. So there is no downward trend, but 2023 doesn't look any different from 2022.
If I lived in a state that banned abortion, I might get a lot more serious about birth control.
For that reason, I wouldn't be astonished if birth rates went down in states that banned abortion. Women in these states may be reluctant to get pregnant because they couldn't get proper care if something went wrong, and couldn't get proper care even if nothing did, because of all the Ob-Gyns who are leaving.
That's pretty much what happened. Vasectomies went through the roof, women opting to have their tubes tied did as well. Married women who are done adding to their families account for 25% of all abortions. With abortion off the table, they and their partners are choosing to end their reproductive window. But that's not what conservatives were really focused on, they're after the single women who need punishing for not settling down and starting families.
Notice there are no penalties for men anywhere in the conservative states? No fines for failing your duty to marry the woman carrying your fetus and supporting a family? What isn't penalized is just as telling as what is.
“The answer may shock you!”
I’m so used to that clickbait phrase that I didn’t realize at first that Kevin was using it as a joke. The thing that’s shocking me most at this point is that I’m not looking at an ad that features a close up of some sort of skin disease.
IDK bruh. If you squint your eyes, you might spot a seasonal trend. Why don't you widen the period of your observation?
Still don't believe me? How about looking at Chart A -- https://bityl.co/MV5C
Well, more like two and a half…
Oh hey look noisy data with a seasonal trend over just 2 summers that Kevin just completely ignores and says there's nothing there.