IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v99y2013icp18-26.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Perceptions of susceptibility to pregnancy among U.S. women obtaining abortions

Author

Listed:
  • Frohwirth, Lori
  • Moore, Ann M.
  • Maniaci, Renata

Abstract

More than half (52%) of unintended pregnancies in the United States (U.S.) occur among the 10.7% of women using no contraceptive method. We interviewed a sample of women obtaining abortions in the U.S. in 2008 (n = 49) and explored their attitudes toward and beliefs about their risk of pregnancy. We found that most respondents perceived themselves to have a low likelihood of becoming pregnant at the time that the index pregnancy occurred. Respondents' reasons for this perceived low likelihood fell into four categories: perceived invulnerability to pregnancy without contraceptive use, perceptions of subfecundity, self-described inattention to the possibility of conception and perceived protection from their current use of contraception (although the majority in this subgroup were using contraception inconsistently or incorrectly). About half of the women discussed more than one reason when explaining why they perceived themselves to have a low risk of pregnancy at that time. We propose a modified Health Belief Model to account for women's low perceived susceptibility to pregnancy based on our results. Further research is needed to quantify the proportion of women who are at risk of pregnancy who do not believe they are at risk and their reasons why, so as to be able to better address women's misconceptions about fecundity and conception with the goal of preventing unintended pregnancy.

Suggested Citation

  • Frohwirth, Lori & Moore, Ann M. & Maniaci, Renata, 2013. "Perceptions of susceptibility to pregnancy among U.S. women obtaining abortions," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 18-26.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:99:y:2013:i:c:p:18-26
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.10.010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953613005583
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.10.010?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Moore, Ann M. & Frohwirth, Lori & Miller, Elizabeth, 2010. "Male reproductive control of women who have experienced intimate partner violence in the United States," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(11), pages 1737-1744, June.
    2. Sanner, Margareta A., 2001. "Exchanging spare parts or becoming a new person? People's attitudes toward receiving and donating organs," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 52(10), pages 1491-1499, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alison Gemmill & Sarah K. Cowan, 2021. "Low perceived susceptibility to pregnancy as a reason for contraceptive nonuse among women with unintended births," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 44(31), pages 759-774.
    2. Ester Lazzari & Edith Gray & Bernard Baffour, 2022. "A dyadic approach to the study of perceived subfecundity and contraceptive use," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 47(1), pages 1-36.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schweda, Mark & Schicktanz, Silke, 2009. "Public ideas and values concerning the commercialization of organ donation in four European countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(6), pages 1129-1136, March.
    2. Lauren Maxwell & Karen Devries & Danielle Zionts & Jeanne L Alhusen & Jacquelyn Campbell, 2015. "Estimating the Effect of Intimate Partner Violence on Women’s Use of Contraception: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(2), pages 1-25, February.
    3. Cortes, D & Gamboa, L. F. & Rodríguez, P, 2020. "Contraception, Intra-household Behaviour and Epidemic: Evidence from the Zika crisis in Colombia," Documentos de Trabajo 18443, Universidad del Rosario.
    4. Puri, Sunita & Adams, Vincanne & Ivey, Susan & Nachtigall, Robert D., 2011. ""There is such a thing as too many daughters, but not too many sons": A qualitative study of son preference and fetal sex selection among Indian immigrants in the United States," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(7), pages 1169-1176, April.
    5. repec:cup:judgdm:v:13:y:2018:i:5:p:441-450 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Palmer, Jennifer J. & Storeng, Katerini T., 2016. "Building the nation's body: The contested role of abortion and family planning in post-war South Sudan," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 84-92.
    7. Kranenburg, Leonieke W. & Kerssens, Chantal & Ijzermans, Jan N.M. & Zuidema, Willij & Weimar, Willem & Busschbach, Jan J.V., 2005. "Reluctant acceptance of xenotransplantation in kidney patients on the waiting list for transplantation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(8), pages 1828-1834, October.
    8. Bailey, Phillippa K. & Ben-Shlomo, Yoav & de Salis, Isabel & Tomson, Charles & Owen-Smith, Amanda, 2016. "Better the donor you know? A qualitative study of renal patients' views on ‘altruistic’ live-donor kidney transplantation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 104-111.
    9. Rosie L Latimer & Lenka A Vodstrcil & Christopher K Fairley & Vincent J Cornelisse & Eric P F Chow & Tim R H Read & Catriona S Bradshaw, 2018. "Non-consensual condom removal, reported by patients at a sexual health clinic in Melbourne, Australia," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(12), pages 1-16, December.
    10. Steinberg, Julia R. & Tschann, Jeanne M. & Furgerson, Dorothy & Harper, Cynthia C., 2016. "Psychosocial factors and pre-abortion psychological health: The significance of stigma," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 67-75.
    11. Paul Rozin & Christopher Dunn & Natalie Fedotova, 2018. "Reversing the causal arrow: Incidence and properties of negative backward magical contagion in Americans," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 13(5), pages 441-450, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:99:y:2013:i:c:p:18-26. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.