Do Pregnancy Intentions Matter? A Research Note Revisiting Relationships Among Pregnancy, Birth, and Maternal Outcomes

The prevention of unplanned or unintended pregnancies continues to be a cornerstone of U.S. reproductive health policy, but the evidence that such pregnancies cause adverse maternal and child outcomes is limited. In this research note, we examine these relationships using recent large-scale data and inverse propensity weights esti­mated from gen­er­al­ized boosted mod­els. We find that preg­nancy tim­ing is related to maternal experience during pregnancy, but not to infant outcomes at birth—both of which are consistent with prior research. In an addition to the literature, we show that pregnancy timing is relevant for a number of maternal outcomes, such as the onset of depression and intimate partner violence, changes in smoking behavior, and receipt of med­i­cal care. These find­ings sug­gest that pol­icy intended to improve infant wel­fare by preventing unintended pregnancies has little empirical support, but that policy focused on increasing reproductive autonomy and maternal well-being has the potential to improve outcomes.