The economics of abortion access
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2022
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the Supreme Court seems poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, we talk to an economist about the long-term consequences for someone denied an abortion.
Read more:
What can economic research tell us about the effects of abortion access on women’s lives?
As the Supreme Court seems poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, we talk to economist Caitlin Myers at Middlebury College, who has been asking this question in her research. Myers says there is a lot we can learn from the data about how being denied an abortion affects people’s economic futures and opportunities, even decades later.
Myers, along with more than 150 other economists, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the Mississippi abortion case currently under consideration, to call attention to this long-term impact. She also wrote an op-ed for The Post about how restricting abortion access restricts women’s lives.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | What was your reaction to the news on Monday night and what were your first thoughts? |
| 0:07.1 | I was not surprised by the news that the court appears to be on the verge of overturning |
| 0:15.5 | row. |
| 0:16.5 | I think that a lot of people thought that writing had been on the wall, but I was very |
| 0:20.8 | surprised to be reading it via a leak. |
| 0:24.9 | The content of the leaked draft opinion also surprised me in several ways. |
| 0:30.8 | That's Caitlin Myers, she's an economist at Millbury College. |
| 0:35.1 | What surprised her was the rationale that was used by the court. |
| 0:39.1 | The draft opinion seemed to argue that you can overturn Roe v Wade without having a huge |
| 0:44.7 | impact on people's lives. |
| 0:48.7 | For me as an economist, that is where we get to step in. |
| 0:52.7 | I don't feel particularly well equipped to offer an opinion to society on the ethics of |
| 0:57.8 | abortion or on the constitutional law issues here. |
| 1:02.0 | But we economists are very well equipped to talk about the objective evidence on the |
| 1:07.7 | causal effects of abortion policy on people's lives. |
| 1:11.1 | We did so. |
| 1:12.1 | We spoke up with quite a loud voice, more than 150 of us filed an amicus brief in this |
| 1:16.8 | case. |
| 1:18.9 | We provided ample evidence that we do know a lot about the causal effects of abortion |
| 1:24.9 | access and that they are substantial. |
| 1:28.4 | That's why I was so surprised and disappointed in the draft brief to see the court say, |
| 1:34.2 | yeah, there's this whole issue of societal reliance and we don't really have any way to |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Washington Post, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Washington Post and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.