A third of unplanned pregnancies aborted in Australia

Almost a third of unplanned pregnancies in Australia end in abortion, survey data reveals.

Angela Taft, a senior research fellow at Melbourne's La Trobe University.

Almost a third of unplanned pregnancies in Australia end in abortion while stillbirth is more common among migrant women with “non white” backgrounds, according to survey data released today by the Medical Journal of Australia.

The data, collected by researchers from La Trobe University and the University of Western Australia, attempts to establish the prevalence of abortions and stillbirths.

Researchers from the Judith Lumley Centre at La Trobe University, led by Angela Taft, found that one in four Australian women became pregnant in the past 10 years without planning to do so, and that 30.4 per cent of those pregnancies ended in abortion. The team undertook a national random computer-assisted mobile and landline telephone survey between December 2014 and May 2015 and interviewed 2013 women aged between 18 and 45.

“A total of 1390 women had been pregnant during the past 10 years, including 362 unintended pregnancies,” the research states. “Most unintended pregnancies were reported as wanted; 26 per cent were described as unwanted; of unwanted pregnancies, 80 per cent were terminated.”

Anti-abortionists will go to the High Court this week to challenge Victorian and Tasmanian laws for “safe-access zones” to keep protesters at least 150m from abortion clinics.

Maryam Mozooni, a research fellow at the University of Western Australia, found stillbirths occurred most frequently among women of African or Indian backgrounds.

Dr Mozooni and her team analysed routinely collected birth, perinatal and mortality data for all non-indigenous women in WA from 2005 to 2013, and found that compared with Australian-born women, migrants of Indian, African and “other” ethnic origin were more likely to have stillbirths not long before their due dates; and women of African and “other” background were more likely to have stillbirths during labour.

Dr Mozooni said a more in-depth investigation into the patterns of health service use, pregnancy and labour care of migrant women would be warranted to understand the causes. “Many African women are reluctant to undergo obstetric interventions such as caesarean delivery because they worry that multiple operations can lead to infertility or even death,” her research states. “These beliefs may inhibit them seeking routine antenatal care during pregnancy, resulting in lost opportunities for medical interventions.”