Study establishes the effectiveness of postabortion contraception

A recent article by Ipas staff and colleagues offers strong evidence that provision of postabortion contraception helps women avoid repeat unplanned pregnancies and reduces their risk for future unsafe abortions. Reducing unplanned pregnancy and abortion in Zimbabwe through postabortion contraception was written by Ipas Senior Research Fellow (former Director of Research) Brooke R. Johnson; Senior Nursing Sister Singatsho Ndhlovu and Senior Lecturer Tsungai Chipato, University of Zimbabwe Medical School; and doctoral candidate Sherry L. Farr, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The article appears in the June 2002 issue of Studies in Family Planning, published by the Population Council

The article reports on a comparison study of two groups of women treated for abortion complications at the two largest public hospitals in Zimbabwe. One group received contraceptive counseling and methods, while the other group received no special contraceptive services. Researchers tracked the women for 12 months following their postabortion care treatment to assess their contraceptive use, repeat pregnancies and repeat abortions.

The study - which was conducted jointly by the University of Zimbabwe Department of Obstetrics and Gynæcology and Ipas - revealed that women who received ward-based postabortion family-planning services had higher contraceptive use for at least one year after hospital discharge, as well as fewer unplanned pregnancies and abortions. In fact, during the follow-up period, the group who did not receive special contraceptive services experienced more than twice the number of unplanned pregnancies than the group who received contraceptive counseling and methods.

"This is the first longitudinal study to demonstrate the true effectiveness of postabortion contraception," says Johnson.

The results also indicate that the provision of contraceptive services is one of the keys to reducing maternal mortality from unsafe abortion. This finding has important implications for countries like Zimbabwe, where complications of unsafe abortion have been ranked as a major cause of maternal deaths.

Ipas is an international nongovernmental organization that has worked for nearly three decades to reduce abortion-related deaths and injuries and to increase women's ability to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights. Ipas's global and country programs include training, research, advocacy, distribution of reproductive health technologies and information dissemination.

For more information, contact:
Kirsten Sherk
Senior Associate, Media Relations
e-mail: sherkk@ipas.org
phone: 919.960.5612
fax: 919.929.0258