CHARACTERISTICS OF INJECTABLE CONTRACEPTIVE USERS IN A LOW-INCOME POPULATION IN TEXAS

Among 600 women at 17 family planning clinics in Texas who expressed i nterest in using the hormonal injectable depot medroxyprogesterone ace tate (DMPA), 536 (89%) actually received the injectable. Thirty percen t of the DMPA recipients were younger than 21 and 77% were not married . The average numbers of pregnancies and births were 1.9 and 1.2 per w oman; one-third of the women had had at least one abortion. The majori ty of women receiving DMPA (66%) were using it to space births. Their main sources of information about the method were friends (42%) and he alth care providers (37%), and the most commonly reported reason for i ts use was dissatisfaction with previous contraceptive methods.