ABSTRACT
Legal abortion services have been available in public and private health facilities in Mexico City since April 2007 for pregnancies of up to 12 weeks gestation. As of January 2011, more than 50,000 procedures have been performed by Ministry of Health hospitals and clinics. We researched trends in service users' characteristics, types of procedures performed, post-procedure complications, repeat abortions, and postabortion uptake of contraception in 15 designated hospitals from April 2007 to March 2010. The trend in procedures has been toward more medication and manual vacuum aspiration abortions and fewer done through dilation and curettage. Percentages of post-procedure complications and repeat abortions remain low (2.3 and 0.9 percent, respectively). Uptake of postabortion contraception has increased over time; 85 percent of women selected a method in 2009-10, compared with 73 percent in 2007-08. Our findings indicate that the Ministry of Health's program provides safe services that contribute to the prevention of repeat unintended pregnancies.
Subject(s)
Abortion Applicants/classification , Abortion, Legal , Family Planning Services/trends , National Health Programs/organization & administration , Postoperative Complications/epidemiology , Abortion Applicants/psychology , Abortion, Legal/legislation & jurisprudence , Abortion, Legal/methods , Abortion, Legal/standards , Abortion, Legal/statistics & numerical data , Aftercare/standards , Aftercare/statistics & numerical data , Contraception/statistics & numerical data , Contraception/trends , Contraception Behavior/trends , Family Planning Services/standards , Female , Humans , Mexico , Patient Selection , Postoperative Complications/etiology , Pregnancy , Pregnancy Trimester, First , Pregnancy, Unplanned , Vacuum Curettage/adverse effects , Vacuum Curettage/statistics & numerical dataABSTRACT
In opposition to Mexico City's legalization of first-trimester abortion, 17 Mexican states (53 percent) have introduced initiatives or reforms to ban abortion entirely, and other states have similar legislation pending. We conducted an opinion survey in eight states--four where constitutional amendments have already been approved and four with pending amendments. Using logistic regression analyses, we found that higher education, political party affiliation, and awareness of reforms/initiatives were significantly associated with support for the Mexico City law. Legal abortion was supported by a large proportion of respondents in cases of rape (45-70 percent), risk to a woman's life (55-71 percent), and risk to a woman's health (48-68 percent). A larger percentage of respondents favored the Mexico City law, which limits elective legal abortion to the first 12 weeks of gestation (32-54 percent), than elective abortion without regard to gestational limit (14-31 percent).
