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Trends in the method and gestational age of abortion in high-income countries

BACKGROUND: Examining the distribution of abortions by method of abortion and gestational age at time of termination provides insight about the options women may have to terminate their pregnancies. Comparing these distributions across countries and over time is an important step toward understandin...

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Autores principales: Popinchalk, Anna, Sedgh, Gilda
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BMJ Publishing Group 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6579506/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30962177
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjsrh-2018-200149
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author Popinchalk, Anna
Sedgh, Gilda
author_facet Popinchalk, Anna
Sedgh, Gilda
author_sort Popinchalk, Anna
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Examining the distribution of abortions by method of abortion and gestational age at time of termination provides insight about the options women may have to terminate their pregnancies. Comparing these distributions across countries and over time is an important step toward understanding the factors that can drive these distributions, including regulations and practices related to the provision of abortion services, and women’s preferences and needs. METHODS: We sought official statistics on gestational age and method of abortion for all high-income countries with liberal abortion laws. For the 24 high-income countries with available data, we calculated percentage distributions of abortions by gestational age of pregnancy and method of abortion for 2017 or the most recent year for which data were available, and assessed trends in the preceding 10 years whenever possible. RESULTS: Medication (or medical) abortion accounts for at least half of all abortions in the majority of countries. In the majority of countries over 90% of all abortions were completed before 13 weeks, and more than two-thirds of abortions occurred before the first 9 weeks of gestation. Over the past 10 years there has been an increase in both the proportion of abortions that were medication abortions and the proportion that were obtained before 9 weeks gestation. CONCLUSIONS: These findings highlight changes in abortion provision in the past decade. More research is needed to understand whether the observed distributions are a function of women’s preferences or of barriers to the timing and type of care they would prefer.
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spelling pubmed-65795062019-07-02 Trends in the method and gestational age of abortion in high-income countries Popinchalk, Anna Sedgh, Gilda BMJ Sex Reprod Health Review BACKGROUND: Examining the distribution of abortions by method of abortion and gestational age at time of termination provides insight about the options women may have to terminate their pregnancies. Comparing these distributions across countries and over time is an important step toward understanding the factors that can drive these distributions, including regulations and practices related to the provision of abortion services, and women’s preferences and needs. METHODS: We sought official statistics on gestational age and method of abortion for all high-income countries with liberal abortion laws. For the 24 high-income countries with available data, we calculated percentage distributions of abortions by gestational age of pregnancy and method of abortion for 2017 or the most recent year for which data were available, and assessed trends in the preceding 10 years whenever possible. RESULTS: Medication (or medical) abortion accounts for at least half of all abortions in the majority of countries. In the majority of countries over 90% of all abortions were completed before 13 weeks, and more than two-thirds of abortions occurred before the first 9 weeks of gestation. Over the past 10 years there has been an increase in both the proportion of abortions that were medication abortions and the proportion that were obtained before 9 weeks gestation. CONCLUSIONS: These findings highlight changes in abortion provision in the past decade. More research is needed to understand whether the observed distributions are a function of women’s preferences or of barriers to the timing and type of care they would prefer. BMJ Publishing Group 2019-04 2019-04-08 /pmc/articles/PMC6579506/ /pubmed/30962177 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjsrh-2018-200149 Text en © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2019. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
spellingShingle Review
Popinchalk, Anna
Sedgh, Gilda
Trends in the method and gestational age of abortion in high-income countries
title Trends in the method and gestational age of abortion in high-income countries
title_full Trends in the method and gestational age of abortion in high-income countries
title_fullStr Trends in the method and gestational age of abortion in high-income countries
title_full_unstemmed Trends in the method and gestational age of abortion in high-income countries
title_short Trends in the method and gestational age of abortion in high-income countries
title_sort trends in the method and gestational age of abortion in high-income countries
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6579506/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30962177
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjsrh-2018-200149
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