Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The government of Texas recently enacted multiple restrictions and funding limitations on women’s health organizations that provide abortion services or are associated with those that do.  These policies have caused numerous clinic closures throughout the state, drastically reducing access to care.  We use quarterly snapshots of health center addresses from a network of women's health centers to calculate the driving distance to the nearest clinic for each ZIP code.  Matching this with restricted geotagged data of all birth certicates for Texas for 2007-2013, we find that an increase of 100 miles to the nearest clinic results in a 1.1% increase in the birth rate.