CONTRACEPTIVE PRACTICES OF WOMEN REQUESTING TERMINATION OF PREGNANCY - A STUDY FROM CHINA

In order to develop a program for prevention of unwanted pregnancies, we conducted a survey of contraceptive practices and reasons for contr aceptive failures of 1520 women seeking abortion at eight large hospit als in Zheng Zhou City, Henan Province, P.R. China, during the period from March 1996 to May 1996. The most frequent cause of the unplanned pregnancy was contraceptive failure (71.9%); 61.7% (938) of these curr ent pregnancies were potentially predictable by virtue of nonuse of co ntraception (427) or by recognition of contraceptive failures (511). A mong the contraceptive failures, the proportion of condom mishaps was the highest (29.7%), next was IUD failures (23.5%), then rhythm miscal culation (15.9%). Most of abortion seekers (77.1%) used some contracep tive methods previously. But, only 19.7% of them used a contraceptive method at the first sexual intercourse. Among 1520 abortion seekers, 5 7.6% had used condoms previously; 50.9% of the condom users had at lea st one instance of condom mishap. The rhythm method had been used by 3 1.7% of abortion seekers previously; 59.1% of the rhythm users had at least one instance of rhythm failure. Of the 16.8% of abortion seekers who had used pills, 56.0% of them had pill failures. Among condom and pill failures, most of them (46.4% condom users and 56.0% pill users) belonged to the user failure category (poor compliance). Of those see king abortion, 56.4% had experienced at least one instance of previous abortion; 5.3% had experienced previous abortions at least two times. Emergency contraception had been utilized by only 10 subjects prior t o this current pregnancy. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Inc.