This chapter offers new estimates of how the global gag rule has affected abortion rates across developing countries in four regions: Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The regression analysis follows a "difference-in-difference" strategy that is commonly used in statistical analyses to estimate the impact of a policy change or a new program. The main finding is that the global gag rule is associated with a very

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... ge increase in abortion rates in Latin America and the Caribbean. In this region, women in countries that were highly exposed to the global gag rule had more than three times the odds of having an abortion after the global gag rule was reinstated in 2001 compared to women in less exposed countries and before the reinstatement of the policy. This effect is even larger than it is for Sub-Saharan Africa, where women in highly exposed countries had about twice the odds of having an abortion after the 2001 reinstatement of the policy compared to women in less exposed countries and before the policy was reinstated.