Reproductive Health

PRC faculty in the area of Reproductive Health address important questions related to fertility, contraception, and pregnancy outcomes in Texas, the U.S., and international contexts. In the last 6 years, Texas has become a proving ground for policies that restrict access to reproductive health services; results for Texas have implications for national policy. PRC researchers have studied the impact of these policies and findings provided the factual basis for the 2016 Supreme Court decision striking down two major Texas abortion restrictions as unconstitutionally burdening a woman’s right to the procedure. PRC reproductive health research is also being used internationally in a petition before the Supreme Court of Brazil and as evidence in the debate in Ireland over whether to call a referendum on reproductive health services.

Researchers in this area are conducting extensive primary data collection. They are pioneering the use of novel sources of information including family planning and abortion clinics, Medicaid claims, online public opinion panels, voting records, orders from Women on the Web (an online medical abortion service), and focus groups carried out in the regions of Brazil hit hardest by the Zika epidemic. They are using the innovative application of recent advances in statistical methods for social policy evaluation and Bayesian inference which has appeared in the highest-ranked medical and social science journals.

• Area Projects