Yash Tiwari
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Statistics indicate that 90% of abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. The most common reason given for seeking an abortion is the desire to postpone childbearing or childrearing. It is often said that this early stage accounts for almost all abortions, and a primary reason for seeking an abortion is to avoid or terminate an unwanted pregnancy. No one can speak with certainty about how many abortions are motivated by women’s perceptions of unwantedness. But it seems clear that fetal gender plays an important role in the decision-making process. For example, it is often assumed that the choice to terminate a pregnancy is usually taken by women. However, there are many instances of men also making the choice and sometimes even insisting on an abortion. In addition, abortion data shows that single women tend to terminate their pregnancies at higher rates than married women, even though unmarried women are more likely to want children in the future. These facts undoubtedly suggest that a woman’s decision to seek an abortion is about more than having or not having a child.

Abortion is the intentional termination of pregnancy by any means other than live birth, for any reason other than to produce a live birth and preserve the life and health of the baby after delivery. Abortion has many different medical, psychological, social, and economic consequences. Worldwide, abortion accounts for 8% of women’s deaths during pregnancy and childbirth. Globally, there has been a sharp decline in recourse to abortion in the past decade, due to increased access to contraceptives and better education of people who already have children. In developing countries in 2002, 41% of pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) were unintended, compared with 22% in developed countries. Only four percent of married women with unwanted pregnancies had abortions.

The main reason for having an abortion was that having a baby would interfere with a woman’s job, school, or ability to care for dependents. An estimated one-fourth of women reported this as a reason for their most recent abortion. One-third reported that having a baby would make it difficult for them to support their other children, while one-fifth said they did not want to be a single mother or were having problems with their husband or partner. Male partners’ attitudes toward abortion are associated with the reasons women give for having one. Women in partnerships in which the man was favorable to abortion were more likely than others to report not having enough money to raise a child and being positive towards their pregnancy.

Maternal motivation is a complex entity, and hence there is no single, universal set of reasons why women seek termination. The most frequently cited reasons related to family planning and range from the desire to postpone or space future pregnancies to an inability or unwillingness to care for a child at a given point in time; from being in an unstable relationship with the father of the pregnancy to an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy. Ultimately these reasons are as individualistic as the circumstances in which women find themselves.