On The Issues I.-Abortion

I will consider "hot button" topics that dominated the US presidential election, applying the economic approach. I start with the most controversial of all - abortion.

The central issue and main frontline around the topic of abortion is at which point should the fetus’s (purported) right to life gain legal prominence over a woman’s right to control her own body. There are several points of view, the one extreme being that the fetus should enjoy precedence from the moment of conception, while at the other extreme there are those who believe in a woman’s right to choose up until birth. Between the two extremes one prominent point of view holds that a woman’s right to choose should enjoy precedence until the fetus becomes “viable” (that is, it can survive outside of the whomb), while after that point (usually between weeks 20-24 of the pregnancy) fetal rights should be protected and abortion be permitted only in specified circumstances (when the mother’s life or health is in danger, rape, incest, etc.).

This post will not and indeed cannot decide the major ethical issues around abortion, including at which point can a fetus be regarded as a human person and whether one’s control over one’s body should be “absolute”. However, I believe that economic analysis can play a role in at least clarifying some points in the debate. It can both serve as a normative benchmark to those who would approach the issue from a consequentialist perspective, as well as a positive benchmark for understanding what determines how societies view and regulate abortion.

Economic analysis deals with (marginal) costs and (marginal) benefits. A first approximation of a theory of abortion policy might start from the premise that abortion is (should be?) allowed to the point where its marginal social benefit equals the marginal social cost. Of course, public policy often deviate from the social optimum, hence, a more realistic approach would hold that abortion policy is decided as a result of competition between different interest groups. One interest group to consider is women who can get pregnant at some point (fertile and also sexually active) as well as their families, partners, friends, etc. Another interest group to reckon with is the pro-life movement, including many who oppose abortion from a religious point of view. Furthermore, many societies have traditionally controlled many aspects of women’s sexuality, as for most of human history it was difficult to ascertain paternity. Banning abortion can be one such control over the behaviour of women.

Now, what are the benefits of women controlling their bodies, and in particular, their own fertility (for them, as well as possibly for others)? One is the obvious benefit of avoiding an unwanted pregnancy, which in itself is a hard experience for most women. Another key benefit, both for the women involved and partly also for others, is that the ability to control one’s fertility decreases uncertainty about the possibility of dropping out of the labour force or from school/college. Decreasing these uncertainties also promote investment in women’s and girls’ human capital. Consequently, when the returns on human capital are higher, the benefits from a laxer abortion regulation are larger, hence we expect, for example, skill-biased technological change to induce more liberal attitudes and policies toward abortion. There is empirical evidence suggesting that in fact unwanted pregnancies are more costly (in terms of foregone earnings) for women enrolling in educational programs. There is also evidence on the legality of abortion having an effect on women’s level of education, especially that of black women. There are, of course, ways women can lower the risk of an unwanted pregnancy, such as avoiding unprotected sex, or cutting back on sex in general (for evidence on this, see this paper showing that making abortion more difficult reduces STD rates among teenagers). If unwanted pregnancies do happen, many women might undergo illegal (“back alley”) abortions, or go abroad (or to another state) to get an abortion. Notice that these, especially back alley abortion, are also costly (or outright dangerous) ways of dealing with the risk or reality of an unwanted pregnancy. Making or keeping abortion legal allows women to forego such costly and sometimes risky ways of dealing with unwanted pregnancies or the risk of them.

Another benefit from abortion is that it allows for the better timing of pregnancies and consequently, births. Many young women may yet be unprepared for motherhood and may not be able to care for the child to the same extent they would be able at a later time. Allowing women to better time their pregnancies can lead to the birth of children in whom their parents, particulary their mother, invest more. Hence, one benefit of more liberal abortion laws that it can lead to higher overall investment in the human capital of children. Again, as the return on human capital increases, we might expect a movement toward allowing abortions.

Do these benefits, and the fact that we live in a highly knowledge-intensive economy, imply we should have legal abortion up until birth? My view is that they do not imply that. What they do imply is that there are sizeable (private and social) benefits of giving women sufficient opportunity and a reasonably wide time window to decide whether or not they wish to end their pregnancies. A very big time window (like up to ~9 months) may not be necessary as most women can decide whether they want to keep their fetuses during the first few months of the pregnancy. The additional benefit of allowing late-term abortions is, for that reason, much smaller than the benefit of allowing abortion during the first and second trimester. Its cost, on the other hand, may be substantially higher than that of earlier abortions. Late stage “viable” fetuses might be said to possess “personhood status” with a (perhaps much) higher probability than fetuses relatively early in their development. Their welfare therefore may be given a larger weight when deciding how laxly or strictly a given society regulates access to abortion. Still, if continuing the pregnancy poses a serious risk to the mother’s life or health, we tend to give priority to the mother’s welfare, given that she has personhood status with certainity. In fact, most countries that allow abortion do not allow it in the third trimester. The since overturned Roe v. Wade decision also allowed restrictions on aborton during the third trimester. However, there are some exceptions, including when the life and health of the mother is in danger, when abortion is usually allowed even very late in the pregnancy. In short, the recent practice of most highly developed countires seems to give credence to my “theory” on the benefits and costs of abortion.

People in the pro-life movement, of course, also put a large weight on the welfare of early stage embryos. The pro-life movement have been influential in the United States and some other countries. In most developed countries, however, a moderate pro-choice view dominates and even in the United States, a majority of both men and women support legal abortion at least in the fist trimester (but most people, including most women, also support retrictions on late term abortions). At the end of the day, economics cannot answer the question of how much we should care about the welfare of fetuses and at which point their "preferences” start to matter, for these are fundamentally philosophical questions.

It might be argued that the preferences/interests of fetuses (provided they have some personhood status) are systematically underrepresented in the debate, given that they cannot speak for themselves. In many societies, however, it has been women’s interests that have often taken the back seat. Discrimination against women has decreased a lot in the developed world. Today, societies in rich countries are thus much less likely to undervalue the interests of women than they did in the past or do many less developed societies. Meanwhile, it is not clear if people are more or less willing to consider fetal welfare than say, a hundred years ago. Assuming the latter remained roughly unchanged, the relative empowerment of women not surprisingly led to more permissive attitudes and regulation of abortion.

Before I conclude I would like to pose the question whether it is possible to improve the outcomes for everyone concerned, including women, the pro-choice and pro-life camps and the fetuses/potential children. Put it differently, would it be possible, for instance, for people in the pro-life pressure groups to compensate some women to give birth instead of aborting their fetuses? Notice first that the fetuses/potential children themselves cannot do so, for the simple reason that there is no way a mother can enter into a contract with her future (or, for that matter, already existing) child. On the other hand, pro-life groups could, in principle set up funds for supporting (especially poor) women who give birth. This could include pre- and post-natal care as well as financial support. Governments can (and often do), of course, also “chime in”. There are two more potentially Pareto-improving policies that come to my mind: we could 1) give mothers the right to (part of) the future income of her children, 2) legalize markets in parental rights (i.e. “markets in babies”) as suggested by Richard Posner. Both policies would be highly controversial, but both are arguably pro-life and also pro-choice (from the mothers’, but not from the children’s point of view, but notice that children do not have much freedom of choice over a range of things anyway). Of course, selfish mothers could choose to impoverish or otherwise exploit their children (under policy 1), while under policy 2) children might be given to people who are richer but not necessarily better parents. I do not wish to argue for these suggestions, rather, I want to stress the possibility of finding potentially Pareto-improving (partial) solutions to the abortion issue.

I would conclude with stating my own view. My view is that abortion should be allowed for much of a pregnancy’s duration, but (apart from the standard exceptions) not after fetal viability. I believe such a position is a consistent normative application of the economic approach to abortion I sketched in this post. I also think that it is in general important to protect women’s right to control their bodies, while also being cognizant of the ethical dilemmas regarding abortion, and this view also informs my opinion. However, one could arrive at very different conclusions depending on how much weight one puts on fetal welfare at different points of the pregnancy. With this I would wrap up my discussion and thereby also apologize in advance for any errors or omissions on my part.