Thomas Stratmann, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, and Jonathan Klick, Professor of Law at Florida State University, came out with a study that states:
Incentives matter. They matter even in activities as primal as sex, and they matter even among teenagers, who are conventionally thought to be relatively myopic. If the expected costs of risky sex are raised, teens will substitute toward less risky activities such as protected sex or abstinence. In addition to modeling the decision making processes of teenagers, this insight is important in other contexts as well. Many public policies can be improved by recognizing the sensitivity of teenage sexual decisions to costs and benefits.
We study one set of policies in this paper. We show that increasing the cost of abortion for teens lowers the insurance value of abortion. This induces teenage girls to avoid risky sex, which will likely have the effect of lowering pregnancy rates, abortion rates, and birth rates among this group of individuals. While these positive effects alone might not justify parental involvement laws, they presumably should not be ignored in the debate. Behavior is not static, and claims based on the assumption of static behavior are flawed.
In other words, as I’ve said before, abortion subsidizes risky sexual behavior, which in turn creates more abortions.
The full study can be found here and here.
The study that you provided, http://www.law.northwestern.edu/colloquium/law_economics/Klick.pdf ,basically states that teens are promiscuous due to the fact they have abortion as an outlet. I don’t buy that and it sounds like a load of crap. The CDC came out with a report indicating that teen pregnancy rates are DECLINING
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/03facts/teenbirth.htm We can probably attribute the decline to birth control, condoms, and abstinence. If anything I think teens are much more educated about sex and know the consequences. We no longer live in the 50’s and we have to speak to our children openly about sex. Or request sex education - However, I’m not sure if many will go for that considering that many reglious groups are against that. Also, it’s not like abortion is readily available for teenagers. Many states across the country require parental consent in order to have an abortion. If a teenager is promiscuous I think the fact that they have to ask mommy or daddy to sign papers for an abortion might have them think about other alternatives.
Julissa,
Why don’t you buy the argument? Remember, economists don’t deal with averages, they deal primarily with margins. I agree with you that the ‘typical’ person may not think this way, but I don’t think it is hard to believe that the fact that abortion is an option, will lead to people on the margin, those people on the fence, to say, ‘hey, why not have sex with this girl, if i sleep with her and she gets pregnant i always have abortion to rely on’, or the female to say, ‘if the condom breaks, i could always get an abortion’, and therefore engage in riskier sex, which in turn, creates more abortions.
This reminds me of an interesting fact about abortion that used to confuse me, but made more sense the more I thought about it. It is universally the case that men always favor abortion rights much more than women do, not just in the United States, but in every country where abortion is legal. When I first found this out, I thought it odd, but upon further thought, it makes perfect sense. Abortion, in itself, benefits men much more than it benefits women. Think about all of the costs associated with abortion, and I don’t mean the financial costs, I mean the emotional costs. In an abortion, it is always going to be the women who bear the emotional costs much more than men do, if they do at all. But the benefits of not having a child, while it also benefits the women, also benefits the man, who may have to pay child support, or be morally obliged to be a father figure to a child he otherwise didn’t want. So the costs of abortion are almost none existent to males, while the benefits are clearly there, hence a stronger male support for abortion. Add to that that abortion increases riskier sex, a fact that also benefits men much more than women (after all, men have always engaged in, and enjoyed, higher levels of promiscuous sex than women), and it all makes sense.
I have a male friend of mine who bluntly admits this. When ever we discuss abortion, and I start talking about my pro-life views, he blurts out, “why do you care anyway, it is the girl who has to go through with it anyway, a ti no te duele nada, and without abortion you may be stuck with kids you don’t want with women you don’t want”, in other words, us men don’t bear the costs, only the benefits. I still disagree with his pro-choice views, but his logic in that statement is straightforward.
Great reading, keep up the great posts.
Peace, JiggaDigga