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Abortion Health Care Reform International Mental health Women's health

Klick’s economics studies of the negative effects of abortion are worth consulting

The economics literature over the past 15 years has shown significant downsides of abortion for women, yet it remains largely unknown and uncited by pro-life scholars and lawyers. The work of University of Pennsylvania law and economics professor Jonathan Klick (individually and with others) is particularly well regarded and worth consulting. Consider, for example, his Mandatory Waiting Periods for Abortions and Female Mental Health, 16(1) HEALTH MATRIX: JOURNAL OF LAW-MEDICINE 183-208 (2006). Arguing that female suicide rates are a good demographic-level proxy for women’s mental heath, Klick shows that there is a “statistically and practically significant drop in the suicide rate when states adopt waiting periods,” and so concludes that “waiting periods do improve mental health among females.” He adds that the effect is robust and apparently causal. (He does consider alternative explanations but finds them less likely.) Online see http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/hmax16&div=12&g_sent=1&collection=journals or http://law.cwru.edu/StudentLife/organizations/healthmatrix/files/7%2016.1%20klick.pdf . On SSRN, it can be found at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=821304##

Also worthwhile are the recent installments in the continuing studies by Klick and Thomas Stratmann of how unlimited abortion leads to more “risky sex” (referring to sex acts that risk pregnancy and disease): Abortion Access and Risky Sex Among Teens: Parental Involvement Laws and Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 24(1) JOURNAL OF LAW, ECONOMICS, & ORGANIZATION 2-21 (2006). It’s found on SSRN at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=819304. See also their 2009 paper The Effect of Abortion Liberalization on Sexual Behavior: International Evidence (with Sven Neelsen), U of Penn Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 09-20.

Richard Stith

Richard Stith is a research professor at Valparaiso University in Indiana. Having received both his law degree and a doctorate in ethics from Yale University, he taught legal philosophy and comparative law at Valpo Law for 41 years. From Harvard and from the University of California, Berkeley, he holds degrees in political theory. He was for a year director of the Program in Biomedical Ethics at St. Louis University School of Medicine. He served for many years on the Advisory Council of the National Lawyers Association and on the Board of Editors of the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LAW and has taught and published on comparative law and legal philosophy in Spain, India, China, Ukraine, Chile and Mexico. In 2001, he became the first U.S. professor to be designated by the European Commission as teacher of a Jean Monnet Module (on the law of the European Union) and shortly thereafter was named the first Swygert Research Fellow in recognition of his scholarship. He is a consultant on the Academic Council for the doctoral program in law at the Universidad de Los Andes in Chile, where he has directed doctoral seminars. Professor Stith has served as a member of the national boards of University Faculty for Life and of the Consistent Life Network. He has been a speaker at national, state, and international right-to-life gatherings and has presented pro-life testimony by invitation before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution and to state and foreign legislative committees. Among his significant publications: “The Priority of Respect: How Our Common Humanity Can Ground Our Individual Dignity,” International Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2004): 165. Other works can be found at http://works.bepress.com/richard_stith/ Email: [email protected]