What Is the Impact of Post-Dobbs Abortion Restrictions on Intimate Partner Violence Rates in the U.S.?

This study investigates how abortion restrictions following the 2022 Dobbs decision affected rates of intimate partner violence (IPV) among reproductive-aged women in the United States. Using data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (2017–2023) and changes in travel distance to abortion providers, the researchers applied difference-in-differences methods. They found that increased distance to abortion services and the presence of near-total bans led to a 7–10% rise in IPV incidents, with an estimated 9,000 additional cases in affected states. The study highlights significant social spillovers from abortion policy changes, especially among women aged 25–34 and in socioeconomically disadvantaged counties.

Full Citation and Link to the Article

Dhaval M. Dave, Christine Durrance, Bilge Erten, Yang Wang, and Barbara L. Wolfe. 2025. Abortion Restrictions and Intimate Partner Violence in the Dobbs Era. NBER Working Paper No. 33916. National Bureau of Economic Research. June 2025. Here is a working link to the article: https://www.nber.org/papers/w33916

Extended Summary

Central Research Question

This paper addresses a pressing question in the post-Roe landscape of American reproductive policy: Do abortion restrictions enacted after the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision lead to an increase in intimate partner violence (IPV) among women of reproductive age? The authors seek to quantify whether policies that limit abortion access—primarily through increased travel distance to abortion facilities and outright bans—have unintended consequences on women’s exposure to IPV. Specifically, they aim to provide the first causal evidence of such a relationship using rigorous econometric methods.

Previous Literature

The study builds on a growing body of literature exploring the broader impacts of reproductive health policy. Previous work has shown that increased travel distance to abortion clinics significantly reduces abortion access and increases birth rates, especially among low-income women (e.g., Myers 2024a; Dench et al. 2024). Moreover, literature suggests that unintended pregnancies may heighten women’s exposure to IPV, with evidence from the Turnaway Study indicating that women denied abortions are more likely to remain in abusive relationships (Roberts et al. 2014). Additional studies link mandatory waiting periods and TRAP laws to increased IPV (Durrance et al. 2024; Muratori 2025). The authors argue that restrictive abortion policies may affect IPV not just through their impact on pregnancy outcomes, but also by introducing economic strain, deteriorating health, and power imbalances within households.

Data

The analysis combines two primary sources of data covering the period from 2017 to 2023. First, it uses incident-level data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which records crimes reported to law enforcement across U.S. jurisdictions, including victim characteristics, offender information, and the nature of the crime. The researchers focus specifically on reported IPV incidents involving women aged 15 to 44, capturing offenses such as simple and aggravated assault, intimidation, and sexual assault.

Second, the study draws on a newly compiled database tracking monthly travel distance from the centroid of each county to the nearest abortion facility (Myers 2024b). This dataset reflects changes in clinic accessibility due to facility closures or bans and enables the researchers to measure changes in access over time and across geographic regions.

The final analytic sample includes 16,646 county-half-year observations, covering roughly 40% of U.S. counties and 30% of the national population. The authors supplement these datasets with county- and state-level demographic, economic, and policy variables to control for confounding influences.

Methods

To estimate causal effects, the authors implement a generalized difference-in-differences (DiD) framework, comparing counties that experienced significant increases in travel distance or abortion bans with counties that did not. Their primary specification relates the IPV rate per 10,000 women to the distance (in hundreds of miles) to the nearest abortion provider, controlling for time-varying county and state characteristics, and including both county and half-year fixed effects.

They also use a synthetic difference-in-differences (SDID) design, which improves robustness by matching pre-treatment trends and adjusting for potential spatial and temporal heterogeneity. Event study analyses accompany both approaches to test for parallel trends and examine dynamic treatment effects over time.

The researchers interpret their estimates as intention-to-treat (ITT) effects, meaning they reflect average impacts across all women in a county, regardless of whether an individual directly sought abortion services. Where appropriate, they also present back-of-the-envelope treatment-on-the-treated (TOT) calculations using known effects of distance on abortion and birth outcomes from previous literature.

Findings / Size Effects

The results show a consistent and statistically significant relationship between abortion restrictions and increases in IPV. The authors find that a 100-mile increase in travel distance to the nearest abortion provider raises the IPV rate by approximately 2.4 to 2.9 incidents per 10,000 women of reproductive age per half year—an increase of 4.4 to 5.5 percent relative to the sample mean of 53.17.

Using the SDID framework, they find that post-Dobbs abortion bans increased IPV rates by 6.1 to 7.5 percent, implying roughly 3.2 to 3.9 additional IPV incidents per 10,000 women. Given that residents in ban states experienced an average increase of 241 miles in travel distance, these estimates translate to a roughly 10 percent rise in IPV for those counties.

In terms of overall magnitude, the authors estimate that these policy changes led to at least 9,000 additional IPV incidents among women in states with trigger bans, generating an estimated $1.24 billion in additional social costs based on lifetime cost-per-victim figures from prior literature. When using higher-end estimates, they place the additional social burden at nearly $1.9 billion.

Further disaggregation reveals important heterogeneity in effects:

• Age: Women aged 25–34 experience the largest absolute increase in IPV incidents, while teenage women and women aged 40–44 see the largest percentage increases.

• Race/Ethnicity: Non-Hispanic Black women experience the largest absolute increases in IPV (2.43 incidents per 10,000; 3.3 percent), followed by non-Hispanic Whites and Hispanics, though differences are not statistically significant across groups.

• Socioeconomic Status: Counties with lower educational attainment and higher poverty rates exhibit stronger effects, suggesting that the burden of abortion restrictions disproportionately falls on disadvantaged communities.

• Urban vs. Rural: Urban counties show a larger response (4.1 percent increase in IPV), whereas effects in rural counties are smaller and not statistically significant.

The increase in IPV is mostly concentrated in cases of simple assault, though the authors also find statistically significant increases in aggravated assault, sexual violence, and incidents involving physical injury or arrest. These patterns help rule out the possibility that the observed effects are driven solely by changes in reporting behavior, as more severe incidents are generally more likely to be reported to police.

Sensitivity checks confirm that the results are robust to alternative functional forms, alternate clustering strategies, exclusion of 2020 (the start of the COVID-19 pandemic), and controls for Medicaid expansion and other state-level policies. Modeling the earlier implementation of Texas’s SB8 law further strengthens the estimated effects.

Conclusion

This study provides compelling empirical evidence that abortion restrictions in the post-Dobbs era have broader social consequences beyond their intended reproductive effects. Specifically, increasing the distance to abortion providers or imposing near-total abortion bans significantly raises women’s risk of intimate partner violence. The study shows that these effects are not evenly distributed: they are concentrated among socioeconomically disadvantaged women, women of color, and those living in states with the most severe restrictions.

Importantly, the mechanisms through which abortion restrictions affect IPV go beyond whether a woman carries a pregnancy to term. Increased stress, delays, financial strain, and constrained bargaining power in relationships all contribute to heightened vulnerability. In this light, the findings suggest that policies regulating abortion access may unintentionally exacerbate conditions that increase the risk of violence against women.

By drawing attention to the interpersonal and economic spillovers of reproductive policy, this research encourages policymakers to weigh a wider array of costs and benefits when enacting abortion legislation. The authors highlight the importance of future research to explore similar unintended effects, including on child well-being, maternal health, and public service utilization. In the meantime, the study underscores the need for supportive interventions aimed at protecting women at greater risk of violence in restrictive states.