A Study of Unwanted Pregnancy and Knowledge of Emergency Contraception in Currently Pregnant Women in Bangalore Rural

Unwanted Pregnancy is a pregnancy that pregnant woman or girl decides, of her own free will, is undesired. A major reason for unwanted pregnancy is the shortcomings of contraceptives and family planning delivery systems. Emergency Contraception occupies a unique position in the range of family planning methods currently available to women, as it averts unplanned and unintended pregnancies, which, in turn, reduces unsafe abortion.

1. To determine the proportion of unwanted pregnancy among the currently pregnant women. 2. To identify the social, economic, and contraceptive use factors leading to unwanted pregnancies. 3. To study the abortion seeking behaviour among the women having unwanted pregnancy. 4. To assess the knowledge of emergency contraception in the study group.

The study was conducted in urban health centre of a tertiary care hospital. All the currently pregnant women attending the ANC clinic during the study period from September 2011 to November 2011 were included in the study. Total 104 currently pregnant women were interviewed by a well designed pretested questionnaire. The data was analyzed by percentages and chi-square test.

In the study group, 22(21.15%) women reported the pregnancy as unwanted. There were 2(9.09%) unmarried women with unwanted pregnancy. Among the women with unwanted pregnancy, 20 (90.91%) women wanted to abort the pregnancy. There were only 17 (16.35%) women having knowledge of emergency contraception.

Unwanted pregnancy was reported more in women who were married below the age of 18 yrs. As the duration of marriage and parity increases the reporting of unwanted pregnancies also increased. (p<0.0001) The knowledge of emergency contraception was reported more in graduates. (p<0.0001)