Abstract
Background
High risk for additional unintended pregnancies among abortion patients makes the
abortion care setting an ideal one for facilitating access to contraception. This
study documents attitudes of abortion patients about contraceptive services during
their receipt of abortion services and identifies patient characteristics associated
with desire for contraception and interest in using a long-acting reversible contraceptive
method (LARC).
Study Design
Structured surveys were administered to 542 patients at five US abortion-providing
facilities between March and June of 2010. Supplementary information was collected
from 161 women who had had abortions in the past 5 years through an online survey.
Results
Among abortion patients, two thirds reported wanting to leave their appointments with
a contraceptive method and 69% felt that the abortion setting was an appropriate one
for receiving contraceptive information. Having Medicaid and having ever used oral
contraceptives were predictive of wanting to leave with a method. Women having a second
or higher-order abortion were over twice as likely as women having a first abortion
to indicate interest in LARC, while black women were half as likely as white women
to indicate this interest.
Conclusion
Many women are interested in learning about and obtaining contraceptive methods, including
LARC, in the abortion care setting.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: May 05, 2011
Accepted:
March 14,
2011
Received in revised form:
March 14,
2011
Received:
February 4,
2011
Footnotes
���Declaration of conflicting interests: The authors declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.
Identification
Copyright
© 2011 Elsevier Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
