Once upon a time, deciding whether a pregnancy was unintended was a simple and uncontroversial task; today, researchers face the challenges of measuring ambiguity and of interpreting apparent contradictions in behaviors, plans and emotions. But once researchers categorize births as unintended,...
When they set out to explore whether postpartum contraceptive use varies by birth intendedness, Sarah R. Hayford and colleagues had one main hypothesis—that women who had had intended births would be more...
Research into unintended pregnancies often focuses on their socioeconomic impact on mothers and children, but there’s a broader financial dimension at play: Unintended pregnancies cost the U.S. taxpayer a lot of money. A pair of articles published in Perspectives in 2011 set out to...
Young women in the southern U.S. have disproportionately high rates of unintended pregnancy, yet little is known about this population’s attitudes toward the issue. An article in Perspectives in 2016 was a step in addressing this research gap. The qualitative study’s main takeaway?...
Since the late 1990s, there has been no shortage of discussion about what we mean when we talk about unintended pregnancy—and whether research into the topic has been asking the right questions. Early in the conversation, John Santelli and colleagues reviewed the literature and talked with...
A commonly used benchmark for measuring women’s reproductive health is the proportion of pregnancies that are unintended—that is, that occurred too soon or were unwanted. In the U.S., about half of all pregnancies each year are unintended. Implicit in current measures of intendedness is the...
Throughout its 50 years, Perspectives has published a great deal of work on unintended pregnancy, covering such topics as how often it occurs, its outcomes and impacts, who is most likely to experience it and how it can be prevented. In recent decades, sexual and reproductive health...
Between 1967, when Colorado became the first state to loosen its restrictions on abortion, and 1973, when the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling established the right of all women to have the procedure, the number of legal abortions in the U.S. soared. By 1977, the number of pregnancy...
AbortionLaw, Policy and FundingUnintended Pregnancy
At first glance, it makes sense to assume that all pregnancies among women using contraceptives are unintended. After all, why would a woman who wants to become pregnant use a contraceptive? Not so fast: A 1999...
Contraceptive MethodsSexuality and Sexual BehaviorUnintended Pregnancy
What works in efforts to reduce unintended pregnancy among young people? In a 2001 report, Emerging Answers: Research Findings on Programs to Reduce Teen Pregnancy, Douglas Kirby reviewed 73 studies that evaluated various types of risk reduction programs for adolescents. In a...
AdolescentsSex EducationSexuality and Sexual BehaviorUnintended Pregnancy
