By Roz Brown
AUSTIN, Texas – Access to birth control has been responsible for one third of women’s wage gains since the 1960s, and restrictions on reproductive health could reverse those gains, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
The group has launched a new tool to assess the financial impacts of state-level reproductive health restrictions.
Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said restricting access to comprehensive reproductive health care not only costs individual women wages, but can be expensive for state economies.
“We know at the national level,” said Johnson, “the state-level abortion restrictions cost $105 billion per year by reducing labor-force participation and earnings.”
Data from the new online tool shows that if all state-level abortion restrictions were eliminated, more than a half million women would enter the workforce. The estimated earnings increase for working women in Texas would be more than $14 billion.
