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Nearly half of women who have abortions live below the federal poverty level
As Missouri, Georgia and Alabama move to restrict abortion access, the cost can vary by state, trimester, procedure and other factors.
A wave of anti-abortion bills in Missouri, Georgia and Alabama has reignited the debate about one of the country’s most contentious issues.
Such restrictions aren’t just about limiting when and under what circumstances women can get abortions — these laws can also affect how much the procedure costs, research suggests. Meanwhile, those who are denied the procedure fare worse economically, some studies have shown.
Missouri’s Republican-controlled Senate passed a bill early Thursday seeking to ban abortion at eight weeks of pregnancy. Republican Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed the nation’s restrictive abortion law just one day earlier, making it a felony to perform abortions in most cases.
A week earlier, Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed a law banning abortion once a fetal cardiac activity can be detected, typically around six weeks — not long, critics say, after a woman might discover she is pregnant. Supporters of the legislation call it a “heartbeat” bill, a term some doctors have criticized.
The average cost of a surgical abortion at 10 weeks hovers at $508
Nine in 10 abortions are performed within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and their cost can vary widely.
The average cost of a surgical abortion at 10 weeks was $508 in 2014, according to the Guttmacher Institute, with the price tag ranging from $75 to $2,500. Early medication abortion (also known as EMA or the abortion pill) at 10 weeks cost $535 on average, with costs ranging from $75 to $1,633.
While the reproductive-health think tank has yet to publish such data beyond 2014, its researchers haven’t observed any steep rise in cost, according to Guttmacher Institute principal research scientist Rachel Jones. “After adjusting for inflation, the cost doesn’t really increase that much,” Jones told MarketWatch.
But how that average cost bears out across states, providers and numerous other variables, Jones said, remains “a big black box.”
A state’s abortion-policy climate can, however, factor into how much a facility charges. For example, 34 states mandate that women receive pre-abortion counseling, and 27 states have instituted a typically 24-hour waiting period between the counseling and the procedure. Fourteen states require in-person counseling.
Laws that require two visits to a clinic are associated with a $107 increase in the price of an abortion, according to a 2015 analysis of two-visit and Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws.
“Restrictive state abortion laws may impose additional expenses on the providers of abortion in order to comply with the laws,” author Marshall Medoff wrote. “As a consequence, restrictive state abortion laws may increase the price of an abortion as abortion providers pass the additional costs of complying with the laws on women seeking an abortion.”
Abortions in the second trimester of pregnancy costs substantially more
The price doesn’t always seem to track with the restrictiveness of a state’s laws, according to 2017 research co-authored by Jones.
• The average cost of a first-trimester surgical abortion in states with few abortion restrictions like California, New Jersey and New York was $402 after adjusting for the cost of living.
• In states like Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi — which researchers described as “hostile” to abortion because of their relatively restrictive laws — that average cost was $442.
• In “middle-ground” states like Alaska and New Hampshire, it was $470. “There’s no clear-cut pattern or understanding,” Jones said.
• Prices tend to rise after the first trimester, said Jones, due in part to procedures taking more time and requiring more skill on the provider’s part.
• Women who obtained second-trimester abortions with out-of-pocket costs paid an average of $854 versus $397, 2013 research published co-authored by Jones found.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nearly-half-of-women-who-have-abortions-live-below-in-the-federal-poverty-level-2019-05-17?siteid=rss&rss=1