The Relationship between Abortion Liberalization and Sexual Behavior: International Evidence Jonathan Klick, University of Pennsylvania, Sven Neelsen, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Thomas Stratmann, George Mason University Send correspondence to: Jonathan Klick, University of Pennsylvania Law School, 3501 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. Tel: 215-746-3455; Fax: 215-573-2025; E-mail: jklick@law.upenn.edu Economic theory predicts that abortion laws affect sexual behavior since they change the marginal cost of having risky sex. We estimate the impact of abortion laws on sex- ual behavior by reported gonorrhea incidence. Our data panel includes 41 countries for which consistent gonorrhea data are available for 1980–2000. Compared with laws permitting abortion only to save the pregnant woman’s life or her physical health, the switch to more liberal abortion laws is associated with large increases in reported gon- orrhea incidence. Our results help explain why birth rates do not decline at the same rate abortions increase when laws are liberalized. (JEL: I12, I18, J13, K00, K32, Z13) 1. Introduction Over the last few decades, most industrialized countries have increased access to legal abortions. As a result, some 40% of the world’s population currently resides in countries that permit abortion on demand. Another 25% has access to abortion on socioeconomic and mental health grounds which are, in most cases, broadly interpreted (Center for Reproductive Rights, 2008). We examine the relationship between abortion access and sexual behavior for a sample of 41 North American, European, and Central Asian countries. This work extends previous studies by Klick and Stratmann American Law and Economics Review doi:10.1093/aler/ahs012 Advance Access publication September 17, 2012 c  The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Law and Economics Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. 457 at University of Pennsylvania Library on January 23, 2013 http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from