| Pregnant women who have abortions during their teens are more likely to experience anemia, stillbirths, preterm deliveries,
and low birth weight babies in subsequent pregnancies. Our aim is to identify risk factors for late presentations for
abortions among women presenting for abortions at our facility. During mandatory pre-abortion counseling, a
questionnaire was prepared to collect data. Chi-square test was used to compare profiles of women aged 20 and under with
those aged 20 and over; otherwise, Fisher's exact test was used. We investigated the risk factors associated with second
trimester pregnancy termination using logistic regression. During the course of the study, 1055 women had induced
abortions, whereas 999 had just one abortion. Women who had a single abortion on average were 28.3 years old (standard
deviation 6). 91(8.5%) of the women with a single abortion were teenagers. There was a higher likelihood of pregnant
teenage girls not using contraception (52.2% vs. 26.3%) and of coming to abortions late (38.8% vs. 17.2%) when compared
to pregnant women over 20. Among other factors contributing to late abortion presentations are singleness, nulliparity, and
lack of contraception use in the past. It is more likely for teenagers to present late for abortions with no previous
contraceptive use. There may be a major contributing factor to such a trend in teenage abortions due to a lack of adequate
sexual education and awareness of contraception measures. The problem has been addressed through recommendationsddd |
