Determinants of Induced Abortion Among Reproductive Age (18-44) Women Living in Yerevan Who Have At least One Child: Proposal

Abstract

Induced abortion is one of the most common gynecological interventions. About 44 million abortions take place globally each year. In 2008, six million abortions were performed in developed countries and 38 million in developing countries. While life threatening morbidity from abortions in countries where it is legal is not considered as a major public health problem, unintended pregnancies and subsequent abortions seriously affect women’s health and relationships between family members, and have a great impact on women’s rights and social equity. Several studies found that abortions are most common among young, unmarried, low-income, and educationally disadvantaged women. Repeat abortions and barriers to the prevention of unintended pregnancy have been linked to physical abuse, domestic violence, women’s neglect, poor partner communication and lack of control of her own reproductive life. In Armenia, however, there is a practice of using abortion as a means of family planning, and therefore, determinants of abortion may be different here. Gender selective abortion is another phenomenon of “violence” which places pressure on women to produce children with a certain desired sex and to have an abortion if that is not the case. Armenia is currently considered a low fertility country. While simple reproduction is ensured when the total fertility rate is at least 2.1, according to the United Nations (UN) Population Division in Armenia in 2010 this indicator was around 1.74. According to data from the last 10 years, the first pregnancy of married woman is rarely terminated in Armenia, and the ratio of boys/girls among the first children in families is 1.04- 1.07 which corresponds to the average biological indicator of this ratio (1.02-1.04). Among second children this ratio goes up to 1.08-1.13 and among 3-rd and 4-th children this ratio is 1.6- 1.7. Therefore, gender selection is prevalent in second and third children. The proposed study aims to identify determinants of abortion among women living in Yerevan who have at least one child and to find associations between socioeconomic characteristics, family structure, life satisfaction score, and repeat abortions.