States that restricted or banned abortion after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision have seen thousands more incidents of intimate partner violence, according to a new study.
Intimate partner violence climbed after the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that essentially erased federal protections for abortion, a new study reports.
Published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the study finds in states that instituted near-total abortion bans after the Supreme Court’s decision, intimate partner violence jumped between 7% and 10%. That amounts to between 9,271 and 13,998 additional incidents of intimate partner violence, which occurs between people in a romantic relationship.
The Supreme Court’s ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has led to 14 states implementing near-total abortion bans. Seven others have also adopted various kinds of restrictions, such as gestational age limits and mandatory waiting limits.
Bilge Erten, an associate professor of economics and international relations at Northeastern University and an author of the study, says there are a number of explanations for why these policies could increase intimate partner violence.
In states with abortion bans, women have to travel further to get abortion care, which might require taking time off from work and “creates a financial burden” on them and their partner, Erten explains. With fewer options, there are also “wide-ranging” financial, emotional and physical implications of carrying a child to term that a couple either didn’t want or wasn’t prepared for, she adds.
“Having a child that is not planned is both emotionally and financially extremely costly,” Erten says. “All of those stressors can increase women’s risk of intimate partner violence and strain relationship quality.”
Women also generally “found it harder to exit abusive relationships once they were forced to carry that pregnancy to term,” Erten says, citing the Turnaway study, which this research builds upon.
Intimate partner violence also comes with heavy financial consequences, not only for victims but society at large. The researchers estimate that the thousands of additional intimate partner violence cases are likely to generate about $1.2 billion in costs that come from the money lost by women not being able to work as well as mental and physical health costs.
“In a lot of cases women who do not get access to the abortion care that they want face serious complications later and some of these health effects actually prolong many, many years after being forced to carry a pregnancy that they didn’t want,” Erten says.
In states with near-total bans, intimate partner violence rose across populations, regardless of demographic, but the impacts were noticeably more intense among certain groups.
Women between the ages of 25 and 34 experienced the biggest total increases in intimate partner violence cases. However, the highest percentage increases occurred for teens and women between 40 and 44.
Black women experienced some of the most significant increases in intimate partner violence. However, the researchers note Black women statistically have the highest abortion rate and are more likely to report intimate partner violence. Similarly, although Hispanic women also experienced an increase in violence from their partners, the authors acknowledge they are less likely to report incidents due to concerns around immigration, which could mean those numbers are likely even higher.
However, there was a larger overall trend that indicates abortion bans are hitting the country’s most vulnerable populations the hardest.
“Less educated and more poor regions show especially bigger increases in the IPV in response to these policy changes,” Erten says.
Erten says there is one major caveat to the study: It only includes reported cases of relationship violence.
“In the United States, about half of the incidents get reported, so we are estimating a bit more conservatively,” she says. “Those which are not reported, if you also add those, these estimates we have could even increase more.”