"The results reported in Table 1 indicate that abortion legalization had an effect on fertility rates among all women. Overall, births in repeal states fell by 4% relative to states with no law change between 1971 and 1973. No statistically significant difference in births between the 2 sets of states was observed in 1974;75 or from 1976 to 1980. In addition, these results provide no evidence that modest abortion reforms reduced birth rates, since the estimated differences between fertility rates in reform states and states with no law change were small in magnitude and imply that, if anything, modest reforms were associated with increased birth rates. Table 1 also reports estimates from similar models for fertility among women in different population subgroups. Results indicate that abortion legalization reduced the relative fertility rates of teens and women 35 years of age and older by 12% and 8% respectively, but only by 2% for women between 20 and 34 years of age. Estimates show that births to non-White women in repeal states (vs states with no law change) fell by 12% just following repeal, more than 3 times the effect on White women’s fertility. Nonmarital births fell by almost twice the rate of marital births (5.5% -significant at the 10% level] vs 3.1%) in repeal states between 1971 and 1973 relative to states with no law change. All of these differences disappeared in the years following Roe v Wade."
Roe v. Wade

January 1, 1970

Quote Details

Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Added on April 10, 2026
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English

Sources

p.200

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade