Abstract
Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) seek to reduce abortion incidence by providing counseling to pregnant women. Despite the presence of more than 2,500 CPCs across the United States, there is no causal evidence of their impact on abortion outcomes. This paper develops an instrumental variables strategy that constructs a plausibly exogenous measure of CPC presence by forward-simulating their expansion. Using a 30-year county-level panel from North and South Carolina, I estimate that CPC presence reduces abortion rates by 18 percent, with the largest effects among teenagers and young women. The results provide new evidence on how demand-side interventions shape reproductive decisions.
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