The pharmacist will see you now: Pharmacist prescribed contraceptives and fertility rates.

Abstract

Policies that increase contraceptive access for young women and their partners are a potentially low-cost way of reducing unintended pregnancies and improving later life outcomes. Several states have recently implemented laws that allow pharmacists to prescribe contraceptives to women without the need to see a physician. We study the effect of these state laws on fertility rates. Using US Natality files for 2014-2020, we employ a difference-in-differences strategy using the 13 states that had enacted a law until the first quarter of 2020 as the treated group, and the 15 policy-implementing states post-2020 quarter 1 as the control group. We find approximately 0.5 fewer births per 1000 women aged 15-49 per quarter occur post law implementation, compared to control states. The effect of the policy appears to be focused among women aged 25-34 and 40-44 and women with a high school education or less.