Reproductive health impacts of state-led movements to de-fund abortion
Description
Family planning services offer essential reproductive medical care, crucial to the health and economic prosperity of women and their families across the United States (US). Public funding streams such as Medicaid and Title X are central to the US family planning effort. However, recent state-led attacks on abortion providers threaten the provision of life-saving reproductive healthcare. As abortion continues to become a heavily politicized and contentious issue in the US, federal and state funding for sexual and reproductive health care has come under fire. Following the election of Donald Trump, conservative state lawmakers have passed a considerable number of legal restrictions on abortion facilities and a women's ability to access services. This thesis uses a fixed effects approach as well as a difference in differences regression analysis to examine whether these funding restrictions impacted maternal health and birth outcomes. The difference in differences models reveal that states who passed restrictions on public funding for family planning in 2016 experienced worsened maternal and fetal health outcomes compared to states who did not restrict Medicaid, Title X, or state-level funding streams. The model established strong, statistically significant relationships between funding restrictions and preterm births, low birth weight infants, and maternal mortality. The difference in differences models also show that states who expanded public funding for family planning in 2016 saw improved maternal and fetal health outcomes compared to states that did not expand public funding. Altogether, the thesis results attest that policies aimed at de-funding abortion, reproductive health-focused providers, and Planned Parenthood significantly impact maternal health and birth outcomes.