NEW YORK, Oct 12 (Reuters Health) -- Women who were in abusive households during childhood are at greater risk of having an unintentional first pregnancy, according to a new report.
The findings suggest that childhood experience of "abuse or household dysfunction... may be affecting... ability or motivation to prevent an unintended first pregnancy," researchers write in the October 13th issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
In a survey of 1,193 women in a San Diego, California health maintenance organization, a team lead by Dr. Patricia M. Dietz of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, studied how psychological, physical, and sexual abuse and dysfunctional family life during childhood were related to unintended pregnancies during adulthood.
All of the women in the study were between the ages of 20 and 50 and had been pregnant at least once. Most were white, had attended at least some college, and were married during their first pregnancy.
According to the survey results, 65.8% of women reported that they had experienced two or more types of abuse or household dysfunction during childhood. Childhood psychological, physical, and sexual abuse were reported by 64.4%, 51.6%, and 29.2% of participants, respectively. Additionally, 14.3% of women reported sexual assault by a peer. Finally, 28.5% of women reported that their mothers were physically abused, 36.2% reported substance abuse in the family, and 26.4% reported that a family member was mentally ill or attempted suicide.
More than 45% of women in the study indicated in the survey that their first pregnancy was accidental, Dietz's group found. Women who were frequently psychologically abused or whose mothers were frequently physically abused by their partners were 1.4 times as likely to have an unintended first pregnancy than were women who were not abused; and the risk was 1.5 times as great for women who were frequently physically abused. Finally, women who had experienced four or more types of abuse were at greater risk for unintended pregnancy than were women who had not been abused at all.
"Physicians need to be aware that probably a lot of their patients have experienced abuse during their childhood, and that this may be affecting their ability to prevent a pregnancy that they don't want," Dietz told Reuters Health. "At a minimum, (physicians) should be ready to provide referrals for their patients, such as for counseling, if it's needed."
