The Law and Reproductive Health, 2010-2020

This project analyzes the relationship between laws and reproductive health outcomes. Between 2010 and 2020, state laws that regulate contraception, abortion, and midwifery care, alongside national health care rules and regulations, changed dramatically. The project builds a new database of state laws focused on reproductive health and investigates the effect of laws on women’s and infants’ health and well-being.

The project also collects and analyzes qualitative data from hospital obstetric departments and from birth-rights lawyers to better understand the human and organizational experiences of health care reform. Understanding how the legal environment contributes to maternal and infant health is critical for informing decision-making, reducing social inequalities in the quality of health care, and developing interventions that improve public health and save lives.

This mixed-methods study investigates the relationships between the state and federal legal environment and birth and infant outcomes between 2010 and 2020. The proposed research analyzes the relationships between laws and birth outcomes in three ways. First, the project uses multi-level models to understand how state laws – those that govern contraception, abortion, midwifery, prenatal substance use, health insurance, and adverse medical events – together with the changing federal legal environment, affect infant and maternal health and mortality.

The study also analyzes effects of laws on racial-ethnic disparities in birth outcomes. Second, the study draws from existing qualitative data to better understand, through the eyes of hospital administrators, how the legal environment affects hospitals. Third, in-depth interviews with birth-rights lawyers provide data on how state laws influence legal cases involving pregnant women.

Findings from the project contributes to sociological theory and research on the law and on maternal and infant health.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.