Three analyses are proposed: 1)Comparison of the situation before and after the passage of Roe versus Wade in 1973. Since 13 states had liberalized their abortion laws prior to 1973, this variation across states provides a quasi-experiment that allows testing of the impact of the regulation of abortion on pregnancy outcomes. 2) Analysis of the period before and after the 1976 Hyde amendment that restricted the use of federal funds to pay for abortions for poor women. Currently 12 states use their funds to make up for the lost federal funds. 3) Analysis of the effects of changes in the level of funding of the North Carolina abortion fund on pregnancy outcomes. Two analyses are proposed in this part -- one at the aggregate level, addressing monthly measures of outcomes, and the second that examines outcomes at the individual level. The outcomes that will be analyzed are abortion, fertility and pregnancy rates; the proportion of pregnancies resolved as abortions; the proportion low birth weight. Some of these outcomes are analyzed for socio-economic subgroups that are most extensively affected by changes in policies.
