Abortion laws and women’s health

Abstract

We examine the impact of progressive and regressive abortion legislation on women’shealth in Mexico. Following a 2007 reform in the Federal District of Mexico whichdecriminalised and subsidised early-term elective abortion, multiple other Mexican statesincreased sanctions on illegal abortion. We observe that the original legalisation resulted ina sharp decline in maternal morbidity, particularly morbidity due to haemorrhage early inpregnancy. We observe small or null impacts on women’s health from increasing sanctionson illegal abortion. These results quantify the considerable improvements in non-mortalhealth outcomes flowing from legal access to abortion.