Determinants of induced abortion: an analysis of individual, household and contextual factors in Rajasthan, India.

In the developing world, little is known about the risk and precipitating factors for abortion, due to a dearth of community-based surveys. Most analyses of determinants of induced abortion consider only a small set of household and individual socio-demographic factors and treat abortion as an isolated outcome, which ignores its relationship with prior reproductive health behaviours and experiences. In this paper, data from a cross-sectional survey of abortion knowledge, attitudes and practices among 2571 currently married women of reproductive age in Rajasthan, India, were used to examine contextual-, household- and individual-level determinants of abortion. Bivariate probit models, which jointly determine the probability of pregnancy and the conditional probability of abortion, were used to reflect the probability of abortion as a result of interrelated and sequential events. Increased socioeconomic status and life-cycle factors were associated with both the probability of pregnancy and with the conditional likelihood of abortion. Women who reported personal networks were also more likely to terminate pregnancies, particularly if their network members purportedly had abortion experience. Community knowledge of sex-selective abortion also exerted a significant positive effect on the propensity to terminate a pregnancy. For rural women only, community beliefs regarding spousal consent requirements pre-abortion were also significantly associated with abortion.