Women's Autonomy and Abortion Decision-Making (Revise & resubmit at Journal of Political Economy)

We study how abortion subsidies affect abortion take-up using administrative data from Israel covering the universe of legal abortions. Leveraging a reform that expanded eligibility for government funding for abortion, we find that the subsidy significantly increased abortion, with the largest effects among young women from backgrounds with strict views on abortion. A simple model explains this pattern: subsidies reduce the need for parental financial support, shifting decision-making power toward the young woman. Our findings show that funding abortion expands young women’s autonomy over abortion decisions, placing subsidies in the same policy space as parental consent laws. This mechanism is supported by both survey evidence on intergenerational mismatch in abortion attitudes and corroborative evidence from the United States.