Characteristics of Women Who Obtain Induced Abortion: A Worldwide Review. (RESEARCH NOTE).(Statistical Data Included)

Context: Abortion levels may differ bet women subgroups of women because of variations in the level of unintended pregnancy and in the likelihood that women will choose abortion if they become pregnant unintentionally Understanding differentials in levels of abortion according to women's characteristics can shed light on the circumstances surrounding the reasons leading to abortion.

Methods: Data from government statistics, nationally representative sample surveys and sub-national sources are used to estimate percentage distributions of abortions and abortion rates and ratios by selected characteristics of women, particularly age at abortion, marital status and parity Comparisons are made within and across countries.

Results: Women aged 40 and older generally obtain the lowest proportion of abortions (10% or fewer in most countries). Although adolescents account for a high proportion of abortions in some countries (for example, 33% in Cuba and 22% in Scotland), they do not obtain a disproportionate share of procedures. In general, abortion rates by women's age show an inverted U shaped pattern. Abortion ratios by age, however, show two patterns: a U shape and a monotonic increase with age. In more than half of the countries studied, married women obtain a larger proportion of abortions than unmarried women. However, once pregnant, unmarried women are more likely than married women to choose abortion. More than half of abortions are obtained by women with at least one child. Some variations exist in these patterns by region.

Conclusions: Women's characteristics influence their likelihood of terminating unintended pregnancies. However, within all demographic and socioeconomic subgroups, some women will obtain an abortion when faced with an unintended pregnancy.

Worldwide, reproductive preferences and behavior often vary across socioeconomic and demographic subgroups. Desired family size, the intention to have more children and actual fertility are usually higher among rural women and women without formal education than among their urban and better-educated counterparts.(1) In some societies, women may marry at a relatively young age, have the children they want and then wish to stop childbearing; in others, women may marry later and seek to avoid having children before marriage. These variations not only reflect differences in patterns of family-building goals and experiences, but also are likely to necessitate differences in the means that women use to achieve their desired family size and timing of births, including contraception and abortion.

Even when differences in family formation behavior across socioeconomic and demographic subgroups narrow, as they often do when fertility declines, reliance on contraception and abortion may continue to vary for a number of reasons. The immediate causes of variations in the level f abortions are differing probabilities of unintended pregnancy across subgroups and variations in the likelihood that a woman will choose to have an abortion if she becomes pregnant unintentionally Underlying these causes are other factors.

First is the perceived opportunity cost of having a child. Where women have opportunities for education, employment and career development, younger and unmarried women are the most likely to want to postpone marriage or childbearing, and to obtain an abortion when a pregnancy occurs. In contrast, where women marry young and are expected to have a child soon after marriage, abortion will be infrequent among young women. In many Sub-Saharan African countries, a girl must leave school if she is pregnant, and abortion tends to be most common among young unmarried women who wish to continue their education.(2) In developed countries where women desire to postpone the beginning of family formation, before and sometimes even after marriage, abortion is most prevalent among women younger than 25.(3) Women who are employed tend to be more likely to obtain abortions than those who are not working.(4)