Understanding the Issue of Unwanted Pregnancy in India: An Insight from Calendar Data

Priyanka Dixit, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Faujdar Ram, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

In developing countries like India, the issue of unwanted pregnancy in the context of contraception use has not been explored to date. This study takes advantage of calendar data, which is for the first time available in the Indian National Family Health Survey (2005-06), to deal with the discontinuation of family planning methods and their relation to unwanted pregnancy. Analysis revealed forty percent of ever married women had discontinued using contraception because they become pregnant while using. Another key factor for the discontinuation was also the disapproval of the husband. It should be noted that twenty seven percent of responses were inconsistent with respect to unwanted pregnancy. Furthermore, among users of family planning, failure of periodic abstinence contributed to more than 25 percent whereas discontinuation of the pill and condom contributed to 30 and 26 percent respectively in increasing the unwanted pregnancy. The main reasons for discontinuation due to husband disapproval are highest for condom followed by pill and then periodic abstinence.