CONTENTS
HIGHLIGHTS
September, 1996 |
When a woman believes that she is unlikely to become pregnant, she is unlikely to be interested in contraception (96). In the Philippines, for example, women with unmet need are much less likely than contraceptive users to think that they can ever become pregnant. In interviews some spoke of treatments they had tried in order to conceive, while others said that they rarely had sexual relations or were too old to conceive. These women "concede a certain risk of becoming pregnant but consider it too small to justify the various costs and inconveniences of contracepting" (37). Women with unmet need for limiting births are much more likely than potential spacers to think that they face little risk of pregnancy—probably because most women with unmet need for limiting are older. Among limiters who do not intend to use contraception, for example, 32% say that they are not exposed to the risk of pregnancy compared with only 15% among spacers (see Figure 7). While many women may be right about their inability to conceive, other women face a risk of unintended pregnancy because they do not understand the menstrual cycle or do not know about reproductive physiology in general (38, 92, 164, 166, 203, 222). In Jamaica, for example, the 1993 RH/FPS found that only 30% of women of reproductive age knew when, during the menstrual cycle, that pregnancy is most likely (126). Among Jamaican students, the answer most frequently chosen to all questions about reproduction was "I don't know" (58). In Nigeria a study of women who had had abortions found that virtually none could identify the "safe period" of the month (59). |