The Impact of Women’s Health Clinic Closures on Fertility

Abstract

In recent years, the government of Texas has enacted multiple restrictions and funding limitations on women’s health organizations affiliated with the provision of abortion services. These policies have caused numerous clinic closures throughout the state, drastically reducing access to reproductive health care. We study the impact of these clinic closures on fertility rates by combining quarterly snapshots of health center addresses from a network of women’s health centers with restricted geotagged data of all Texas birth certificates for 2008–2013. We calculate the driving distance to the nearest clinic for each ZIP-code and quarter, and find that an increase of 100 miles to the nearest clinic results in a 1.2 percent increase in the fertility rate. This increase is driven by a 2.4 percent increase in the fertility rate for unmarried women, while there is no statistically significant change for married women.