Limiting women’s access to reproductive health care services, including abortion, can have a devastating impact on states: their economic well-being and the short- and long-term earnings of their residents. It can also have high economic costs to businesses.
New research from the Center on the Economics of Reproductive Health finds that abortion bans and targeted restrictions on abortion providers (TRAP) laws cost state and local economies $105 billion annually by reducing labor force participation and earnings among women.
For states planning to follow Texas’s lead with implementing abortion bans and other restrictions on women’s reproductive rights—including Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and South Dakota—this could mean steep economic losses if such legislation in enacted.
New data from IWPR illustrate these costs in no uncertain terms. In Texas, that translates into a whopping $15 billion in economic losses for women and businesses in the state. For the states listed above, it ranges from $326 million in South Dakota to $6.6 billion in Florida. See our fact sheets on each state below.