The effect of ending public funding for abortion: evidence from West Virginia.

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed to evaluate the immediate impact of West Virginia's 2018 policy change prohibiting state Medicaid funds from covering abortions on the state's abortion rate.

STUDY DESIGN

We use the synthetic control method with a weighted combination of control states to estimate West Virginia's counterfactual abortion rate without the policy change.

METHODS

We obtained abortion data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We used a synthetic control approach to construct a weighted average of control states that resembled West Virginia in various pre-policy characteristics. We then compared the actual abortion rate in West Virginia after the policy change with the estimated counterfactual rate based on the control states.

RESULTS

We found that the abortion rate per 1000 women of reproductive age in West Virginia was approximately 1.3 abortions lower in 2019 compared to the estimated counterfactual rate in the absence of the policy change (3.8 vs. 5.1).

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings suggest that West Virginia's policy change prohibiting Medicaid-funded abortions in 2018 may have led to a reduction in the state's abortion rate in 2019.