(Wall Street Journal) – Abortion is now banned or heavily restricted in about one-third of U.S. states, and some women of childbearing age say that has introduced a new calculus about where to live and work. Though migration patterns are complicated, early data show that the states with the most restrictive laws are seeing some residents leave.

A recent paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research estimated that 13 states with abortion bans collectively saw about 146,000 residents leave due to abortion bans in the year after the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to the procedure. The paper found that while those states—mostly in the South—had been gaining population at a significantly faster rate than other parts of the country, that advantage essentially vanished afterward. The authors looked at patterns in Postal Service change-of-address data after the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Over a five-year period, those states’ populations could be about 1% smaller than if they hadn’t passed abortion restrictions, the paper estimated. (Read More)