epidemiology of abortion in women who refer to therapeutic centers of qom city, iran

background: the termination of pregnancy before 20 th week of gestation is abortion. there is two type of abortion: spontaneous and induce (legal or illegal). the annual number of pregnancy in the world is estimated over 200 million and one third of them is unwanted pregnancy. 95% of unwanted pregnancy is happened in developing country such as iran. in iran, the high prevalence of unwanted pregnancy is' in kohgiloye and boeire ahamd and then in qom province with 36% and the coverage of family planning in this province is 45%. abortion is the most side effect of unwanted pregnancy. as the canon law in iran, unwanted pregnancy is not indicated for induced (legal) abortion. therefore we designed a survey to study epidemiology of abortion in women of qom city in field of abortion's prevalence, method of abortion and attitude of mothers about abortion and unwanted pregnancy. methods: this cross sectional study was designed in 420 women who refer to hospitals, maternities, clinics, health centers and female general practitioners, gynecologist and obstetricians and midwifes with multi stage randomized sampling in area of qom city in 2002. results: prevalence of all type abortion was 27.8% with spontaneous abortion 25%, illegal abortion 2.6% and therapeutic abortion 0.2%. non-professional personals were the most agent of illegal abortion (45%). the most cause of abortion was economic problems (36%) and the choice plan for unwanted pregnancy in 13.3% of women was abortion. there is statistically significant association between history of abortion and family income ( p ) and gravidity ( p ). the abortion rate was 14% of clinically significant pregnancy. conclusion: as the rate of spontaneous abortion in qom city is high, we advise a study to determine the cause of this problem. mass education about side effect of abortion and abortion with non professional personals agent, increase family planning coverage and adaptation of iran canon law about abortion as social and maternal health situation at present time, are the other our advises.