J Fam Plann Reprod Health Care 2006: 32(4) Background At least 50% of pregnancies in the UK are unplanned and approximately one-fifth of conceptions end in legal abortion despite over 70% of women in the age range 16–49 years using some form of contraception.1 Despite free availability of family planning services in the UK, unplanned and unwanted pregnancies remain a public policy issue. It is ...

No method of contraception is 100% effective; over half the women seeking an abortion are using contraception (Jones et al., 2002). It has been estimated that 42 million abortions are carried out every year, and half of these are illegal and unsafe (Sedgh et al., 2007). A proportion of women of all backgrounds with an unintended pregnancy are going to seek an abortion, legal or illegal, irrespe...

BACKGROUND Unplanned pregnancy rates in South Africa are high. Effective use of contraception is therefore an essential public health intervention to prevent unplanned pregnancies. This study describes contraception use and its impact on pregnancy in women participating in HIV prevention research and its implications for public health practice. METHOD A secondary analysis of sociodemographic,...

INTRODUCTION The impact of previous pregnancy outcome on future fertility in Nigeria has not been appreciated, hence the continued neglect of the adoption of safe motherhood measures in this sub-region. The objective of this study was to compare the past pregnancy outcomes among fertile and infertile patients in a Nigerian population. METHODS An institutional-based comparative case-controlled...

BACKGROUND College students have a high incidence of unplanned pregnancies in China, which has highly raised public attention. As such, numerous reproductive health services are provided to college students. This study examined whether health services in college lead to contraceptive use among female college students in heterosexual relationships. METHODS A self-administered questionnaire sur...

The prevalence of unplanned pregnancies contributes to the methodological challenges of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention trials. In this paper, the authors discuss the incidence of pregnancy, including chemical pregnancy, and how the different methods of pregnancy diagnosis could affect the statistical power and calculated outcomes of HIV prevention trials. Study sample size inflat...

BACKGROUND Preventing unintended pregnancies among HIV-positive women through family planning (FP) reduces pregnancy-related morbidity and mortality, decreases the number of pediatric HIV infections, and has also proven to be a cost-effective way to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission. A key element of a comprehensive HIV prevention agenda, aimed at avoiding unintended pregnancies, is reco...

OBJECTIVE To describe contraceptive use and attitudes towards contraceptive use in Sweden which has the highest abortion rate in Western Europe. Secondary objectives were to investigate knowledge of contraceptive methods and outcomes of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. DESIGN Telephone survey. SETTING National survey of women living in Sweden. POPULATION Women between 16 and 49 years. ...

(1) In 2013, an estimated 40% of pregnancies in Cameroon were unintended. (2) More than six in 10 women who want to avoid pregnancy either do not practice contraception or use a relatively ineffective traditional method. These women can be said to have an unmet need for modern contraception. (3) Meeting just half of this unmet need would prevent 187,000 unplanned pregnancies each year, resultin...

Teenage pregnancy, unsafe abortion methods and the high incidence of HIV infections among young people are of great concern to the South African public. Due to the lack of accurate information and understanding, some adolescents are forced to succumb to early motherhood from unplanned pregnancies or opt for back-street abortion with at times fatal results. A qualitative exploratory study was co...