Expert Focus: The economic impacts of access to abortion and contraception

Jennifer Barber

Indiana University Bloomington

Jennifer Barber (opens in a new tab) is a professor of sociology at Indiana University Bloomington and a senior scientist at the university’s Kinsey Institute (opens in a new tab). Much of her recent work explores contraception use (opens in a new tab), pregnancy desires (opens in a new tab), and intimate partner violence (opens in a new tab), as well as the racial divides in access to birth control (opens in a new tab) and attitudes about pregnancy (opens in a new tab). Barber also previously directed the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life project (opens in a new tab), which surveyed 18- and 19-year-old women each week over 2.5 years to track changes in their social lives, such as intimate relationships, sexual behavior, and contraception use.

One element of this project examines racial disparities (opens in a new tab). Black women, for instance, are 2.4 times more likely than White women to have an unplanned pregnancy, in part due to racial disparities in the U.S. poverty rate and access to contraception—and the underlying mechanisms driving those disparities. Barber is a collaborator with fellow Equitable Growth grantee Martha Bailey on the M-CARES project (opens in a new tab), which is exploring how subsidizing reproductive care affects women’s decisions around contraceptive use.

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Zakiya Luna

Washington University in St. Louis

Zakiya T. Luna (opens in a new tab) is a Dean’s Distinguished Professorial Scholar in the Department of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses specifically on social movements and social change, health and inequality, and human rights and reproduction, with an emphasis on the effects of the intersecting inequalities within and across these areas, including gender and racial disparities. Luna is the author of Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice (opens in a new tab), a look at how women of color—and SisterSong (opens in a new tab) in particular, which is the largest national multiethnic reproductive justice advocacy organization—were central to making the reproductive justice movement what it is today and linking the cause of reproductive rights to issues of fair wages, safe housing, job security, and other economic rights. She has written extensively on reproductive justice, and is co-creator and former co-editor of the University of California Press book series Reproductive Justice: A New Vision for the Twenty-First Century (opens in a new tab), a collection of publications that explores the current reproductive justice landscape and serves as a resource for students and advocates.

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Caitlin Knowles Myers

Middlebury College

Caitlin Knowles Myers (opens in a new tab) is the John G. McCullough professor of economics at Middlebury College. Myers’ research examines issues related to gender, race, and the economy, and especially the effects of reproductive policies on people’s professional lives and economic outcomes. Her current work focuses primarily on access to abortion care (opens in a new tab) and the effects of abortion restrictions or burdensome processes, such as traveling to receive care (opens in a new tab) or mandatory waiting periods (opens in a new tab), on the incidence of abortions.

She also writes extensively in the popular press, academic journals, and for research organizations on the growing body of research (opens in a new tab) reinforcing the economic impacts (opens in a new tab) of access to abortion care (opens in a new tab) for women, what restricting that care would do (opens in a new tab) to women, the U.S. labor force, and the overall economy in the United States, and what a post-Roe era (opens in a new tab) could mean in terms of U.S. abortion access and incidence (opens in a new tab). Myers was the lead economist on an amicus brief (opens in a new tab) sent to the Supreme Court in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, detailing the economic imperative of not overturning Roe and signed by more than 150 leading economists.

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Mayra Pineda-Torres

Georgia Institute of Technology (incoming)

Mayra Pineda-Torres (opens in a new tab) is an incoming assistant professor of economics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research interests are centered on the intersection of health economics, labor economics, and gender economics, with a particular focus on topics related to women and teen well-being and the economic and health impacts of access to reproductive healthcare. Her works in progress include papers on access to abortion care and its effects on inter-partner violence and educational attainment. She also co-authored an article that looks into the effects of abortion mandatory waiting periods (opens in a new tab) on abortion timing and abortion rates in Tennessee.

In addition, she has a working paper with Kelly Jones at American University on the impacts of exposure to TRAP laws (opens in a new tab) during adolescence on teen birth rates and educational attainment. This paper finds that young Black women are particularly affected by TRAP laws. In states with such restrictions, teen births increase by 3 percent compared to states without these laws. The paper also finds that adolescent exposure to TRAP laws has downstream impacts on education for Black women, who are 2 to 6 percent less likely to start and complete college.

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Loretta Ross

Smith College

Loretta J. Ross (opens in a new tab) is an associate professor of the study of women and gender at Smith College. Her research interests lie in women’s human rights, reproductive justice, and White supremacy. Ross’ expertise lies in her background as a reproductive justice pioneer and her own personal experience with abortion and unintended pregnancy. She has co-authored three books on reproductive justice (opens in a new tab)—a framework that she co-created with 11 other Black women working within and beyond the pro-choice movement in the 1990s that combines reproductive rights and social justice into one theory of change and centers the voices and experiences of women of color and other marginalized people.

In 1997, she co-founded SisterSong (opens in a new tab), a Southern-based, women of color-led national reproductive justice collective, to work together to improve institutional policies and systems that affect not just the reproductive health of marginalized communities but also their economic security and well-being. Ross is a sought-after thought leader (opens in a new tab) who speaks often (opens in a new tab) (including before congressional committees (opens in a new tab)) about the impact of restricting access to abortion care on women, and especially women of color.

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