Postpartum contraception: subsequent pregnancy, delivery, and abortion rates.

The first subsequent pregnancy rate in a group of women who accepted a variety of contraceptive methods after delivery and after therapeutic abortion is reviewed. Regardless of method chosen, 20 to 30% of postdelivery and 18 to 20% of postabortion patients were pregnant again after 1 year. In those patients who chose no method, 30 to 40% of postdelivery patients and 19 to 30% of postabortion patients were pregnant again 1 year later. When the postdelivery and postabortion patients were compared by outcome of this first subsequent pregnancy, there was no indication that subsequent therapeutic abortion was utilized to a greater extent by those who had had a prior therapeutic abortion than by those who had had a prior delivery.