Shaping Teen Abortion Choices: Access Frictions and Consent Laws

This paper examines how parental consent requirements and access frictions jointly shape teenage reproductive decisions. Exploiting the Spanish 2015 reform that mandated parental consent for 16–17-year-olds, together with Spanish administrative microdata on all registered abortions and births, I find that the reform led to declines in both abortions and pregnancies among affected teenagers. Consistent with a two-stage decision framework, most of the reduction in abortions operates through a decrease in pregnancies, indicating behavioral responses before pregnancy. A simple model of teenage abortion decisions is used to interpret these findings and to clarify how legal and access barriers interact. Using data on proximity to abortion centers and local religiosity, I show how these access frictions operate in the context of parental consent requirements. Where travel costs are high, parental involvement is effectively required even in the absence of formal consent laws, limiting the impact of the reform. When parental consent does bind, local norms shape the margin of adjustment: in more traditional municipalities, the reform primarily affects abortion decisions conditional on pregnancy.