Academics On The Economic Impact Of Overturning Roe V Wade

The Supreme Court of the United States ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and 50 years of precedent federally protecting women’s right to abortion access happened on June 24, 2022. In this special episode of Break the Bias, we share two behind-the-scenes interviews with academics who have been leading the research on the impact of abortion access on women, families, and society that were done at the beginning of June, 2022 before the recent SCOTUS ruling, and Holly Corbett, VP of Content for Consciously Unbiased and Forbes contributor for an article called “How Overturning Roe V. Wade Can Impact The Economy.”

In this episode, you’ll hear from Caitlin Myers, professor of economics at Middlebury College and who, along with more than 150 other economists, filed an amicus brief to highlight the impacts of abortion legalization in the U.S. and model what would happen if Roe v. Wade was overturned, as well as Diana Greene Foster, PhD, professor at the University of California San Francisco and lead author of the landmark Turnaway Study, which examines the effects of unwanted pregnancies on women’s lives. You can listen to the full episode here.

Below is the transcript of this special episode. Show notes linking back to research and articles are provided at the end.

Holly Corbett, VP of Content, Consciously Unbiased & Forbes Contributor:

“If you have a brain, you have bias. So let’s just own it. Some biases help us by simplifying our decision making process. Other biases hold us back by impacting who gets hired and promoted, and even who we approach to be our friends. Welcome to Break the Bias, a podcast where we interview impact makers who are breaking the bias when it comes to inclusion and equity, because sharing our stories is how real belonging happens.”

Caitlin Myers, professor of economics at Middlebury College:

“What we see right now, just like in the 70s, is that childbearing is the single biggest explanatory factor for gender gaps and economic outcomes. True then. True now. If you look at men and women’s earnings, for instance, they trend pretty similarly—up until the point that they become parents. And that’s where the gender gap emerges.”

Corbett (00:53):

“No matter which side of the Roe V Wade debate you lean towards, it’s clear from the data that abortion access is not only a social issue, but also an economic issue. I’m Holly Corbett, VP of content for Consciously Unbiased. This is a special episode of Break the Bias, because we wanted to share two behind the scenes interviews done at the beginning of June, 2022, before the recent SCOTUS ruling, I spoke to Caitlin Myers, professor of economics at Middlebury College and Diana Greene Foster, PhD professor at the University of California, San Francisco for a Forbes article that covers some ways the research illustrates how overturning Roe V Wade could impact the economy and society at large. I’ll share that article link in the show notes.

First up is my conversation with professor Caitlin Myers, who along with more than 150 other economists filed an amicus brief to highlight the impacts of abortion legalization in the U.S. and model what would happen if Roe V. Wade was overturned. Now, onto our interview.”

Myers (02:00):

“I do fully understand that for somebody who believes that a fetus is fully a person— equivalent to a 10-year old person—there is nothing anybody can say about the consequences of not being able to access an abortion for the mother. Those people are going to justify allowing abortion to be legal. But that’s not the situation for most of the U.S. public, right? I mean, you just have to think about somebody who’s had an early-term miscarriage versus somebody who has lost a child, God forbid. Most of us don’t treat those two losses equivalently. Most people don’t place equivalent weight on the personhood of a fetus. And for people who are in that majority viewpoint, it should matter to them. What this means to the mother and to the other family members in families where people are seeking abortions and not able to get them.

Corbett (03:06):

“What about, I mean, obviously there’s been a lot in reading the leaked draft opinion. What’s your response to the argument that those in favor of overturning Roe V Wade, that abortion accent is no longer relevant to women or their families?

Myers (03:24):

“That argument is jaw dropping, and it’s just completely unsupported by a mountain of rigorous evidence. It’s really shocking to me. It’s really, that’s really dispiriting to me. I could actually understand much better arguments the court might make about, I don’t know, constitutional law or personhood, right? An economist doesn’t have a lot to say about that. But for the court to say, ‘Oh, really, you know, we don’t have any way to know if this is going to impact anybody anyway.’ And you know, Mississippi in their argument is basically telling us that all of these policy advances now allow women to kind of effortlessly balance. I’m, <laugh>, I’m exaggerating a bit, but what they’re saying is we have all these policy advances that now make it possible for people to balance parenthood and work with very little sacrifice.”

Myers (04:21):

“I don’t even know why you need an economist to tell you that argument is wrong. I think if you just know any working family, you understand that the American economy is hard on working families. And I have four kids myself. I’ve definitely made a decision to incur those costs and it’s worth it, but the idea that the costs aren’t there, that’s the part that’s just absurd. I can go into any of the evidence you want, but that’s my thought.”

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Corbett (04:49):

“I mean, and the fact that 80% of the caregiving responsibilities continue to fall on women’s shoulders; it just so disproportionately impacts us. But I did want to touch upon regression analysis. It is not my wheelhouse and I don’t think I have to go too deep into this in the article, but maybe just like briefly help me unpack in the economist brief, and how casual inference tools have been used to isolate and measure the impacts of abortion legalization in the United States.”

Myers (05:19):

“Yeah. Causal inference…Okay. So let me give you a fairly quick primer. It’s super cool. And then, let me give you an example, one of many. So economists are really serious about the scientific method and isolating and measuring causal effects. Like not just giving up when we say, ‘Oh, correlation isn’t causation,’ but actually saying, ‘But sometimes it is—And how do we know when it’s?’ So the gold standard for figuring out a causal effect is a randomized controlled trial. In the case of abortion, that would look like, I randomize half of American women to have access to abortion and half not. And then I see what happens to them, which is not ethical or feasible. Right?

But what we can do, even when we can’t run a randomized controlled trial, is we can look for what we call natural experiments. And these are situations where we basically say, look, we the researchers didn’t randomize abortion access, but something like nature, something happened that kind of did it for us. And they’re very powerful, those natural experiments. And that’s where most of our evidence comes from. So let me give you one example of a natural experiment. It’s from the Turnaway study. Are you familiar?:

Corbett (06:35):

“Yes, I just spoke to Dr. Foster about the study.”

Myers (06:38):

“So she’s amazing. And I guess I’ll still use it as an example. And let me tell you why I initially was skeptical of it, and then was won over. So, as you know, the natural experiment here was we have hundreds of women approaching providers, and some of them are finding out when they get there, they’re just past the gestational age, cut-off and they’re turned away. Some of them are just under it, they get the abortion. So the idea is it’s a natural experiment because you can compare the turnaway group to the group that gets in just under [the cut off]. And I was really skeptical of that as a natural experiment when I first heard about it, because I was like, ‘Well, there could be all sorts of unobserved reasons that the women who get there just too late showed up too late. We couldn’t observe it, but they were the ones that were more likely to be in an abusive relationship or more likely to have trouble getting childcare. They already were having more difficult life circumstances. So maybe the reason is they have even more difficult circumstances when we look at them after they [were turned away], that was going to happen anyway. Like things were already very bad for them. So I was skeptical until Diana worked with two economists, Sarah Miller and Laura Wherry, and they connected these women to their Experian credit reports.”

Corbett (07:51):

“I read that.”

Myers (07:52):

“I love that paper. And that’s what convinced me. I was like, if my like skeptical story is true, you would see that the turnaway group is starting to look worse before they ever experience the unintended pregnancy. You don’t see it at all. They look super, super similar right up to that pivotal moment when this is so…”

Corbett (08:11):

“Fascinating, because credit reports are not looking at your gender or parenthood status or any of that…”

Myers (08:18):

“Right. This is objective evidence of a huge financial shock and coming from a natural experiment. So, you know, though they weren’t randomly assigning women to not be able to get abortions. That would be unethical, but basically the experiment’s doing it for them.

One other example. I’ll give you really quickly since you know that one. I have a paper on Texas HB2, which was a trap law in 2013. It went into effect on November 1st, 2013 in Texas, and just about overnight shut half their abortion clinics. And they’ve most of ’em never reopened, so Texas has been getting shocked for a decade now. What that meant was in some parts of Texas, travel distance suddenly went from zero miles to 200 because the clinic closed. In other parts of Texas, it didn’t change because the clinic could stay open. They managed to hang on. And so I have a paper that compares what happened in the areas where travel distance gets shocked compared to the areas where it doesn’t. And that’s also a natural experiment. I show that leading up to the point that that happens, they have really similar abortion rates. And then when travel distance gets shocked, you see that in the areas where it goes up, a bunch of women suddenly can’t reach providers. That’s how we know the causal effect of travel distance. So that’s another example.”

Corbett (09:35):

“That makes a lot of sense. I did wanna touch upon the ways, like in what ways might overturning Roe V Wade have a different economic impact today than it might have had before the 1973 decision decision. What’s changed in terms of women in the workforce?”

Myers (09:57):

“So let me first nuance that up a little bit. My answer to that depends crucially on whether we’re talking about if Roe is overturned, and half the states ban and half the states don’t, or whether we’re talking about if Roe is overturned and the whole country goes dark. I think right now we’re looking at the first one.”

Corbett (10:19):

“Yes.”

Myers (10:19):

“Yeah. There are people who are already kind of predicting the second one. I’m not one of them, but it’s important to realize there are people who think that’s where we’re heading. My answers are going to be really different. So what I want to say is if we’re talking about some states go dark and abortions are available in the rest, we’re not rolling the clock back to 1965. We’re rolling the clock back to about 1970. In 1970, abortion had been legalized in California, New York, Washington, DC, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii, and women were traveling in droves to New York, California, and DC—huge numbers. So that’s what we’re rolling back to. And what we’re going see again is that women are going to flood out of the states that ban to get abortions in the states where it’s still available.

This ties into that travel distance paper. They won’t all make it. So what we know, we can predict with some confidence that about three quarters of the women are going to make it to a provider still. It’s going to be really hard on them. They’re gonna incur like a bunch of extra stress and costs. They’re gonna be delayed, but they’re gonna get there, and about a quarter won’t. And so those quarter [of people] that won’t get there, we’re talking about the poorest women, the most vulnerable women in an already poor and vulnerable population. In a sense, this all hearkens back to 1970, that’s how it was then too. Women with means got out, they found a provider. It was the poor women who didn’t and that’s how it’s going to be again.

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So in that way it’ll be similar, but there are some differences. I would point to a couple of really key differences, and they’re not all about the economy, but I think they’re important to mention. So one it’s not the era of the coat hanger anymore. Women who are looking to self induce will be looking to order medication abortion, it’s safe and effective. Big question mark about how much states are going to crack down and surveil that, and how accessible it’ll be. But it’s a big difference.

But then in terms of just the overall impacts of childbearing, I’m not aware of any evidence that that’s substantially changed. What we see right now with contemporary data is men…let me back up. What we see right now, just like in the 70s, is that childbearing is the single biggest explanatory factor for gender gaps in economic outcomes. True then. True now. Now you look at men and women’s earnings, for instance, and they trend pretty similarly. And they trend pretty similarly up until the point that they become parents. And that’s where the gender gap emerges. What happens when they become parents, if you’re a man, not much. So it’s not much impact to your earnings.”

Corbett (13:23):

“I think [men’s earnings increase slightly] for every child you have.”

Myers (13:25):

“Yeah. Men actually might get some benefit. And then for women, it falls off a cliff. So women’s earnings decreased by about a third, and it is a permanent shock. There is nothing about any policy that’s been passed in the past 50 years that has gotten rid of it; it’s still there. We see it in the data.”

Corbett (13:43):

“Yeah. And women take career breaks… 43% of women as caregivers have to take a career break at some point and then their salary drops. I have to find the data, but I think it’s like 38% for each year. That’s a lasting impact. So we’re so behind the ball.”

*Fact check: 43% of highly-qualified working mothers leave their careers at some point, according to the Harvard Business Review. The financial implications are big: Women lose an average of 18% of their earning power when they take an off-ramp and 37% of their earning power when they spend three or more years out of the workforce.

Myers (13:59):

“Yeah. That’s exactly right. And one of the things that was extra jaw dropping for me in this case that the economist brief is really responding to is that Mississippi puts forth this argument in this case that there’s been all these policy advances in paid leave and childcare services…”

Corbett (14:19):

“Build Back Better got shut down. We have no paid leave. I know. <laugh>”

Myers (14:24):

“Not only  is that true, but the women who get abortions are disproportionately, remember, poor. They’re more likely to be shift workers. They don’t have access to paid leave. Almost none of them have access to paid leave. Very few of them. I mean, a lot of them don’t have access to leave at all,  and they’re looking at childcare costs that are about $10,000 a year. That’s the average price of childcare.”

Corbett (14:45):

“I just read [childcare costs] went up 40% during the pandemic. It’s now $14,117. Who can afford that?”

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Myers (14:54):

“And even if they could afford it, let’s suppose that they manage the snag a subsidy, these are shift workers. It is extremely difficult to schedule childcare when you don’t know what your schedule’s going to be. And it’s varying all over the place and you could get called in and these women mostly are already parenting. And they’re like, how do I keep my job and support the children I have? I don’t have paid leave. I can’t afford childcare. And if they’re going to fall back on the social safety net and not work for a while, which frankly is what…that’s perhaps the most straightforward path for having a newborn, welfare benefits in most of the ban states are laughably low. So for a woman in Mississippi—they just raised it—but the max benefit for a family of three went up from $170 a month to $220. That’s what you’ve got to fall back on.

I actually don’t get angry about ethical disagreements around personhood or the disagreements about constitutional law. I understand and can really engage in those conflicts, but there just shouldn’t be any disagreement about the fact that the American economy is hard on mothers. We need to all acknowledge that as a fact. If this is really about to happen, like it looks like it is, and if we care about children and if we care about our most vulnerable children, we need to get really serious about finally stitching up that incredibly frayed safety net.

Corbett (16:34):

“Can you explain, so abortion restrictions, obviously not only impact women’s economic wellbeing, but also their current and future children. Can you maybe just explain that in your own words? Why exactly, and what are the long term impacts of that?”

Myers (16:50):

“I’m trying to think about a succinct answer. I might not manage it. There’s really two ways in which abortion access affects families and not just women. The first is that most women seeking abortions in the U.S. today already have children. And most of them are low income and struggling to support their families. And we know when they don’t get abortions that they want, they suffer financial setbacks, like tremendous ones that impacts the children they already have. The second thing we know is that women who use abortion to delay a severely mistimed birth until they feel ready to do so, as a result of doing so they invest more in their education. They invest more in their jobs and they establish greater financial security to support those future children. Women don’t randomly seek abortion. Women seek abortion for reasons, for good reasons. And again, I don’t think it’s callous to talk those reasons and they use access to abortion to make sure that their children are wanted and cared for, and that they can support them. And so we can expect to see them struggle a lot more without abortion access.”

Corbett (18:07):

“Yeah. The two other things I wanted to touch on is why is this not only a women’s issue, but everybody’s issue? And how it impacts racial equality. So first, why is it not just a women’s issue; it’s everybody’s issue?

Myers (18:24):

“Well, what I would say is I’d like to believe that we live in a world where everybody cares about women and children and families, and abortion access affects women and children and their families. That said, I’ve just got to say we already know that men don’t bear a great deal of the financial and labor market repercussions or cost of child bearing right now. Women are going to bear the brunt of this. In terms of racial equality, so if we’re talking about a scenario in which half the states ban and half the states don’t, we are returning to a world where women with means will continue to get abortions and poor women will be prevented from doing so. And we know that those increases in travel distance, because of these strong associations between socioeconomic status and race in our country and age—Let me say, we know that the women who are most affected by this are going to be women who are young. I say the women who are most affected are young women, women of color, poor women, particularly living in urban areas in the deep South and the Midwest. Like that’s where you should look for the big effects.”

Corbett (19:46):

“Is there anything else that I haven’t asked you that you think is important to add in terms of the economic impact?”

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Myers (19:55):

“No, I think you asked good questions. I think you asked all the questions…I’ll add one little caveat to some of my predictions. That is a caveat about why things might end up being worse than I’m predicting. So when I talk about how many women can get out and of the ban states and how many can’t, I’m strictly talking about how many women can figure out how to travel 400 miles each way, get a hotel, get an abortion. All of this is coming from statistical modeling. I’m assuming that if they get there, the providers can provide services to them. I’m assuming that basically the providers that are going to remain, can absorb this huge outflow. And that’s really not at all true in the short run at least. Right? My students just conducted a survey of abortion appointment availability. It’s already not great in some areas. I think the providers are going to be adapting and adjusting, but I think it’s perfectly possible that we’re going to see women, even in states where abortion is legal, having trouble accessing it because the providers are overwhelmed. I think we’ll see women who could make the trip, but just can’t get an appointment. And that’s a reason the numbers might be bigger.”

Corbett (21:10):

“Next. I interviewed Diana Greene Foster, Ph.D, professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and lead author of the landmark Turnaway Study, which examines the effects of unwanted pregnancies on women’s lives. Here’s what she had to say.”

Corbett (21:27):

“What would you say to critics who argue that looking at the economics of abortion laws are heartless or callous?”

Foster (21:37):

“We could talk about that for the rest of the time. First of all, I think it’s really important to never insinuate that poor women should get abortions. Like that somehow the idea is that if you can’t afford a child, you shouldn’t have one. That is not what this is about. This is about people who don’t want to have a baby…letting them decide whether it’s a good time or not. And often people give the reason that they don’t have the money to pay for a child. It’s about 40%, but it’s rarely the only reason. These are unwanted pregnancies, and they know in addition to it being the wrong time and their health is poor and the relationship is bad, that they cannot afford a child. So it’s not the only reason, it’s rarely the only reason people give. And when we make people have a child, when they’re not ready, they become poor. Their existing children become poor. For their chance at having a wanted child later, when circumstances improve, becomes lower. So it’s really kicking off a whole set of economic hardships that the pregnant person did not choose.”

Corbett (22:55):

“Thank you. And I, want to make sure that I’m really honing in on why the Turnaway Study in particular provides an accurate reflection of abortion’s impact on women’s economic wellbeing. So if you could just explain that…”

Foster (23:16):

“It’s a perfect study for this because it’s not just all low income people. It’s about the exact population of people who seek abortions, who yes are disproportionately poor, but they’re not entirely poor. It is the consequence when you want an abortion and can’t get one. So we have the people who want abortion and did get one. We can look at their economic trajectories and we can then see people in that exact same economic situation. What happens if they can’t get an abortion? What happens to their economic well-being, their kids, their future prospects? So it’s a perfect study for right now; it’s terrible timing. We actually need this data, because this is exactly what will happen when the Supreme Court enables states to prevent people from getting abortions.”

Corbett (24:09):

“And it was nearly a thousand women from 2008 to 2016? So an eight-year study, roughly?”

Foster (24:17):

“Yeah. We piloted in 2007, we recruited from 2008 to 2010 and we followed people from 2008 to 2016. And we’ve been working on it since.”

Corbett (24:30):

“Thank God you have been because it’s just so needed right now. I pulled all the stats from the study. There were a lot of, I love the one page fact sheets, which I’m linking to from the article. Can you kind of unpack what some of the underlying factors are, why women who are denied abortions are four times more likely to live below the federal poverty line?”

Foster (24:57):

“Yeah. Four times higher odds of living below the poverty line, just to clarify.”

Corbett (25:03):

“Yes. Okay.”

Foster (25:05):

“Why is that we see an immediate drop in full-time employment and yes, public assistance goes up, but it’s not enough to mitigate the loss of employment income. And it is not the case that child support goes up. It’s not the case that public assistance is enough to support a family. It’s hugely lacking. Not just that it’s not enough money, but some people aren’t eligible because of the number of kids they’ve already had or they time out. So when you look at food stamps, which is a little bit better measure of economic hardship because you can’t time out of it, it’s a little bit more needs based. You can see that very high sustained higher levels of food stamps for people who are denied abortions. And another metric is, we ask people whether they have enough money for just basic living needs.

And there we see that people who are denied abortions are more likely report that they don’t have enough money. And it lasts for the whole five years that we studied people. Probably you saw the credit report study. So this is led by an economist at the University of Michigan. What’s super cool about it is that if you look at archived credit reports, you can look at people before they ever even became pregnant and confirmed that the two groups—those who received [a wanted abortion], and those who were denied [a wanted abortion]—were the same for three years leading up to the pregnancy, and different after the pregnancy. She shows…I can send you the real paper if you don’t have it. But she shows greater debt, greater chance of eviction, greater chance of foreclosure, all these public records of economic hardship from the credit agency, which has no idea about pregnancy or childbirth or anything. This is just an outsider view of the person’s economic situation.”

Corbett (27:09):

“I was also wondering, in what ways might overturning Roe have a different economic impact today than it might have before the 1973 decision? I was reading the leaked draft opinion and they were talking about all the modernizations that have been made, but what’s changed with women in the workplace in 2022?”

Foster (27:37):

“Okay, I was going to answer something different based on your lead up. <laugh> One thing that’s different before—I don’t know about the workplace so much—but one thing that’s extremely different from pre-Roe is that there are medication abortion pills. And so pre-Roe, in the years before Roe, there were a few states you could go to. So New York and California, for example, legalized abortion earlier. Really wealthy people could travel. Now we’ll have about half the states banning abortion. So potentially people could travel, but it’ll be people with a car, money, time off work, childcare and the knowledge that they can do it, who will travel. Other people can order medication, abortion pills, but that also requires internet and knowledge and a mailbox. Then also people who are already sick will not be able to travel or undocumented or minors without a car.

Lots of people will be excluded. So one thing that’s different now than pre-Roe is how much, or maybe it’s just exaggerating that what must have existed pre-Roe, is some wealthier people will be able to get their abortion and poor people won’t. And that difference means that these economic hits are going to disproportionately fall on people who can’t afford it. I don’t want to trivialize the economic hit for people who are able to travel. That can be thousands of dollars. And there will be plenty of middle class people who hawk their belongings to be able to do that. It’s not that it is easy for everybody, but some people will be able to do it, and other people will not.”

Corbett (29:28):

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“Abortion restrictions obviously not only impact women’s economic wellbeing, but also those of their current and future children. I just wanted to spell this out in the article. Can you explain how exactly, and talk about some of the long term impact of that like generational wealth?”

Foster (29:54):

“We looked at both what happens to people’s existing children and also what are their chances of having intended children later? And what are the circumstances of that? So looking at the children they already had when they became pregnant, it’s often a reason people give for wanting to have an abortion is to take care of the kids they already have. And not only that, but having recently given birth is a risk factor for not realizing you’re pregnant, and therefore not being able to get an abortion in time. Having very closely spaced birth is another problem that’s going to happen with this. People don’t realize they’re at risk for pregnancy again so soon after delivery.”

Corbett(30:41):

“Yes.”

Foster (30:42):

“So taking care of existing kids, we see that existing kids are more likely to be living in poverty, more likely to be living in a house without enough money for basic living needs, and also less likely to achieve developmental milestones. These are things like gross motor, fine motor, language and social emotional. I can send you a book on that, uh, a paper on that too if you want.”

Corbett (31:08):

“Yeah. I would love to see it.”

Foster (31:10):

“Then finally, the set of kids. So the child born because the mom was denied an abortion, how does that kid fare compared to the next kid born to a woman who’s able to get an abortion? Because many people who have abortions actually want to have kids in the future, they just know that the circumstances now either the time or the man or their health or the money, something isn’t working, that they don’t want to have this kid now. They want to wait and have it under better circumstances later. And one really important thing is that when people are denied abortions, they’re just less likely to have an intended pregnancy later. It can be that they’re raising the kids, the kid they just had that they weren’t prepared for. Another is that those better circumstances just are less likely to emerge when you’re denied an abortion. When you’re raising a kid and you can barely afford your life, it doesn’t hit a level of stability where you can feel like you can have yet another kid.”

Corbett (32:09):

“I also want to talk about how there’s so much info out there about the cost of childcare in America. I think it’s like a thousand dollars a month for an infant. And then if you have other children and then couple that with the gender and racial wage gap, it’s really hard to remain in the workplace and financially take care of yourself [and your children].”

Foster (32:32):

“I wish the priority was if people were sincere about this being a life…pro child, they would start with fixing all the social safety nets for low income and families and families with disabled kids. They would not start by making people have kids that they can’t afford and can’t support.”

Corbett (32:56):

“Absolutely. You touched on this already, but how would overturning Roe impact racial equity?”

Foster (33:14):

“People who seek abortions are disproportionately people of color. So it’s already hitting a population that tends to be disadvantaged. And in fact, it’s being disadvantaged that probably makes unintended pregnancy more likely. When Roe is overturned, the most privileged among people who become pregnant will be able to get abortions and the least privilege will not. So it will exacerbate these health disparities, these economic disparities, these racial and ethnic disparities.”

Corbett (33:59):

“Why are abortion restrictions not only a women’s issue, but everybody’s issue?”

Foster (34:07):

“Most directly, some men become pregnant because trans men become pregnant and non-binary people become pregnant. And when women become pregnant, they often have male partners whose lives are also affected.”

Corbett (34:25):

“Is there anything else that you think is important to add that I haven’t asked you?”

Foster (34:31):

“I think it’s super important to frame this as an issue that affects women’s own decision making about their lives and their families to show it’s not irresponsible people who are in this situation. It is people who are trying to make a decision that is responsible, to take care of the kids they already have, to plan their futures, to have kids later with the right guy under the right circumstances. When we take that decision away from people, and the government decides when they have a baby, their outcomes are worse. This is an issue where people can decide what’s best for themselves. The ramifications are just humongous, and not just for that person, but for her family, her future. Framing it as, you can’t think that it’s callous to talk about poverty when what we’re talking about is overriding people’s own life course, their own family decisions. This is not callous; it is respectful to consider what to let people decide for themselves, what their circumstances can support and what they want out of life.”

Corbett (35:48):

“You can learn more about our guests and get show notes at consciouslyonbiased.com slash listen. And we want to hear from you: Please subscribe and rate Break the Bias on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to our podcasts. And drop us a note to let us know if there is a topic you really want to hear about, or a guest you want to have on the show. Thanks for listening to Break the Bias.”

SHOW NOTES:

Forbes: “How Overturning Roe V. Wade Can Impact The Economy”
Politico: Leaked draft majority opinion
Economists Amicus Brief: Caitlin Myers, professor of economics at Middlebury College, filed an amicus brief, along with more than 150 other economists, to highlight the impacts of abortion legalization in the U.S.
Turnaway Study: Research led by Diana Greene Foster, PhD, professor at the University of California San Francisco
American Economic Association: “The Economic Consequences of Being Denied an Abortion”
Middlebury News: “Middlebury Economist Studies the Effects of Abortion Policy in Texas”
Fortune: “The cost of childcare has risen by 41% during the pandemic with families spending up to 20% of their salaries”
The Center for American Progress Report: “Valuing Women’s Caregiving During and After the Coronavirus Crisis”
American Journal of Public Health: “Socioeconomic Outcomes of Women Who Receive and Women Who Are Denied Wanted Abortions in the United States”
Institute for Women’s Policy Research: “The Costs of Reproductive Health
Restrictions: An Economic Case for Ending Harmful State Policies”
The New York Times: “Men Have a Lot to Lose When Roe Falls”
Esquire: “I Am a Trans Man. I Had an Abortion. Reproductive Rights Is Everyone’s Fight.”
Forbes: “Why Cutting Paid Leave From Build Back Better Could Cost The U.S. $28.5 Billion”

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“CEO of Girls Who Code On Why We Need a Marshall Plan For Moms”
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“The Founder of MomWarrior On Overcoming The Motherhood Penalty”