Abstract: The June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court decision represents a seismic shift in US abortion policy with profound implications for fertility, maternal health, and infant well-being. Approximately one in three people who can become pregnant in the US reside in a state with little or no access to safe abortion services since the ruling, predominantly in the South and Midwest. Restricting safe abortion services may differentially impact the reproductive autonomy and fertility of many disadvantaged groups, with long-term implications for population health and disparities. This talk will illuminate the consequences of highly restrictive abortion by describing the impact of Texas’s September 2021 6-week abortion ban on fertility and infant mortality, as well as preliminary findings on the fertility impacts resulting from the Dobbs decision. This talk will also highlight the methodological challenges of estimating the causal effects of these policies.

Bio: Alison Gemmill is a demographer and perinatal epidemiologist with primary interests in maternal, women’s, and perinatal health; sexual and reproductive health and fertility; and life course epidemiology. Much of her research considers how maternal exposures to structural and environmental stressors, which are distributed unequally across the population, affect pregnancy outcomes such as preterm birth, fetal loss, and maternal morbidity, and how such exposures exacerbate health disparities. She is also an expert on US fertility patterns and trends and has published on fertility intention dynamics, fertility responses to population shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic, explanations for declining birth rates in the US, and childlessness.