Post-Abortion Contraceptive Use Among Girls and Women in Ghana

Abstract

This quantitative study examined relationships among method safety, peri-abortion family planning counseling, immediate post-abortion family planning method adoption, and current modern contraception use among girls and women in Ghana. Our data comprised a sample of 1,416 abortion-seekers aged 15 to 49 years from the 2017 Ghana Maternal Health Survey. Results from binary logistic regression analyses suggest that those who adopted post-abortion contraception were more likely to be current users of contraception than those who did not. Also, although counterintuitive, girls and women using a safe abortion method were less likely to be current user of contraception than those using unsafe abortion methods. By induction, young women’s vulnerability that underpins unsafe abortions translated into seeking contraception.

Keywords:

• Post-abortion contraception
• family planning counseling
• abortion safety
• Ghana

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in DHS Program’s Survey Dataset Files, Ghana: Special 2017, at https://www.dhsprogram.com/data/dataset/Ghana_Special_2017.cfm?flag=0. The individual women’s file name is GHIQ7JFL.