FREQUENCY OF strongSEXUALstrong ACTIVITY AMONG UNMARRIED ADOLESCENT GIRLS.pdfVIP

FREQUENCY OF SEXUAL ACTIVITY AMONG UNMARRIED ADOLESCENT GIRLS: DO STATE POLICIES PERTAINING TO ABORTION ACCESS MATTER? Bisakha Sen University of Alabama at Birmingham. INTRODUCTION Over the last decade, there has been a marked increase in state laws regulating abortion in this country. For example, whereas in 1988 only 13 states required paren- tal notification before a minor could obtain abortion, at present all but 9 states have that requirement. In 1976 the Congress passed the Hyde Amendment which cut off Federal funding of abortion for Medicaid recipients except in life threatening cases, thus leaving the choice of making such funds available entirely to the states. At present, 16 states fund all abortions sought by Medicaid recipients, 32 states only fund abor- tions resulting from rape or incest or life-threatening pregnancies, and 2 states only fund abortions in case of life-threatening pregnancies. In addition, 15 states have placed various restrictions on private insurance coverage of abortion procedures. Each additional regulation increases the cost of an abortion and hence the oppor- tunity cost of engaging in sex when a pregnancy is not desired. A substantial litera- ture in economics has investigated whether the above restrictions affect the number of abortions obtained, particularly by minors, and the results largely indicate that restrictions do reduce such abortions. In contrast, whether the restrictions affect the antecedents of pregnancy – namely sexual activity and contraception use among mi- nors – remains a relatively unexplored issue. Yet, this is without doubt an important issue. Adolescent pre-marital sexual activity is among the leading social problems in the USA. Statistics from the Alan Guttmacher Institute indicate that currently about 3 million teenagers – 25 percent of all sexually active ado