Unwanted children often end up in foster care, and admissions to the system in the US are more frequent where there is restricted access to abortion. The data come from a study published in JAMA Pediatrics, and they signal a flagrant relationship between dysfunctional families and unwanted pregnancies. Moreover, they are of greater relevance for Black children, or children of racial and ethnic minorities, compared with white children.
The study took into consideration more than 4 million children conceived between 1990 and 2011 who were placed in the US foster care system at any point between 2000 and 2020. More than half of the children in the study were males and the mean age was 7.4 years.
In 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned the federal protection to abortion care; many states since then have severely restricted or banned abortion. However, access to abortion was restricted even before 2022 in many states through the Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws. These laws offer a historical mode for estimating the consequences of abortion restrictions, note the authors Savannah Adkins, Noa Talmor and Molly H. White.
There was, according to the study, an 11% increase in foster care placement in states with TRAP laws after abortion was restricted, compared to states without TRAP laws. The increase in admissions was related to housing inadequacy. The consequences were particularly heavy for Black children and children from racial and ethnic minorities, with increasing financial and social cost for the community.
The study points to possible long-term social consequences from the 2022 US Supreme Court decision.
This is by no means the first study to research the social consequences of abortion. A well-known, much disputed study from May 2001, by John J. Donohue and Steven D. Levitt, bore the title The Impact Of Legalized Abortion On Crime and linked the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973 (and the access to abortion in several states from three years before) with the sharp decline in crime registered in the Nineties.
In other words, access to abortion apparently limited crime because it limited unwanted pregnancies, dysfunctional families and children raised in a climate conducive to antisocial behaviors.
