OPINION:
More than 100,000 people gathered in Washington last week for the March for Life. Spread across thousands of signs, the marchers’ central message was rooted in their indispensable belief in the right to life.
That’s what the issue of abortion is and should be about: the basic right to life and the need for the strongest legal protections for those least able to protect themselves.
Abortion advocates make multiple arguments, including a woman’s right to choose, women’s equality and advancement, and even the good of the national economy. For example, as the Supreme Court was deciding Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that if the court overturned Roe v. Wade, it “would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades.”
Abortion laws should never be decided based on economics. That argument boils down to eugenics, and Ms. Yellen’s statement insinuates that the unborn children of women seeking abortions would be of less value than those of women not seeking abortions.
Even if economics had a valid place in the abortion debate, abortion advocates’ argument that unfettered access to abortion is good economics could not be further from the truth.
Throughout history, the only instance in which more live births have been bad for economies is in underdeveloped countries with high fertility rates and limited resources. The U.S. is among the most highly developed countries, has a below-replacement and declining fertility rate, and has abundant resources.
The U.S. and other countries around the world are clamoring for higher fertility rates because the deleterious economic and fiscal consequences of declining fertility rates are unmistakable.
A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City explained that declining fertility rates and an aging population will lead to higher state government expenditures and lower revenue per capita. A Pew Charitable Trust analysis emphasized the long-term consequences on government finances of fewer births, including the fact that “ratings agencies, which take states’ demographics into account when establishing credit ratings, have cited slow population growth in ratings downgrades.”
Even as the biggest economic benefits of more births are realized decades in the future, when those children become productive citizens, states with new abortion restrictions have already experienced superior economic gains than states with hardly any restrictions.
Since the Dobbs decision allowed states to implement their own abortion laws, states with more restrictions have experienced higher employment and output gains than those with the fewest restrictions.
Using the Guttmacher Institute’s classifications, states with the “most restrictive” and “very restrictive” abortion laws experienced an average 5.0% increase in employment (June 2022 to November 2025), compared with an average 3.9% increase among states with the “most protective” and “very protective” abortion laws.
Had the 14 states with the fewest restrictions on abortion experienced the same employment growth as the 19 states with the most restrictions, they would have had 972,000 more people employed today.
As Ms. Yellen explained in 2017, when she was chair of the Federal Reserve, slower labor force growth leads to slower economic growth. That’s particularly problematic when fertility rates fall below replacement (the U.S. fertility rate is currently below 1.6 children per woman, and replacement is about 2.1) because it means fewer workers are available to produce goods and services and to pay taxes that fund entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare.
Since the Dobbs decision, the 19 states with the most abortion restrictions averaged 8.0% nominal state growth in gross domestic product (Q2 2022 to Q1 2025), compared with 6.1% across the 14 states with the fewest restrictions. The benefits accruing to states that protect life at its earliest stages will magnify over time because life itself is the foundation of economic activity. States that discard the dignity and discount the productivity of unborn lives will pay an enduring price.
Ethics is the core of the abortion debate, but pro-life advocates should know they also have economics and fiscal sustainability on their side.
• Rachel Greszler is a senior research fellow in economics and workforce at Advancing American Freedom and a visiting fellow in workforce at the Economic Policy Innovation Center.
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