Early-term abortion bans and sex selection after Dobbs v Jackson

Abstract Following the 2022 US Supreme Court decision Dobbs v Jackson, many states adopted early-term abortion (ETA) bans that prohibit abortions before the age of viability and often before sex determination is technologically feasible. We analyze the effect of ETA bans on the sex ratio at birth among first-generation Chinese, Korean, and Indian (CKI) immigrants using difference-in-differences and triple differences methodologies. While our estimates across higher parity children sometimes indicate a decrease in the sex ratio at birth, they are also generally small and statistically insignificant, which is consistent with continued access to sex selection under ETA bans. In contrast, we find that ETA bans are associated with a large and statistically significant increase in the sex ratio at birth among first-parity children to immigrant CKI women. As elevated sex ratios have not been previously documented on first-parity children, this may indicate that ETA bans shift sex-selective behavior to earlier parities by placing additional emphasis on having a boy now, before any further restrictions on abortions occur. Our estimates suggest that ETA bans caused 139 missing, first-born girls in 2023 alone.