Society for Family Health reveals rise in abortion rate among married women
A Non-Governmental Organisation, Society for Family Health has revealed that the abortion rate among married women has been on the rise.
SFH noted that most married women make the decision to abort pregnancies without the knowledge of their husbands and linked such decision to love for family and inflation which has been consistently on the rise.
This development was made known by SFH’s Country Social and Behaviour Change Coordinator, Delivering Innovation in Self-Care, Michael Titus, in Minna, Niger State on Monday during a dissemination meeting of Niger State Family Planning/DMPA-SC performance of the Delivering Innovation in Self-Care.
According to him, married women terminate pregnancies because they want to minimise the negative economic impact of having additional children on their families.
Titus said, “Abortion among married women is something that is on the rise. For married women, it is obvious because our men are shying away from the fact that family planning uptake is important and beneficial to them and their families.
“Look at the situation in the country, we have so many issues like inflation which is causing the purchasing power of each family to reduce, especially now that the cost of buying pampers and paying school fees are on the rise.
“Women love their families, they love their husbands, they don’t want the situation whereby the purchasing power of the family declines.
’So, you find women who go behind to do the abortion. They don’t want a situation whereby, they get pregnant again as another child added to the number they have would be seen as burdensome on the family and that is why abortion among married women is found be rising.”
He noted that some family planning methods, including Subcutaneous depot medroxyprogesterone acetate self-injectable contraception, are readily available for married women who desire to space their children.
Titus revealed that 27,000 women in Niger State embraced the self-injection method of birth control in the first quarter of this year, while 194,700 women accepted the use of the Subcutaneous depot medroxyprogesterone acetate self-injectable contraception in the past 33 months.
The SFH coordinator said over 300 per cent growth in self-injection rate in the state shows that 52 of every 100 women who opt for DMPA-SC as their method of choice are self-injecting successfully under the supervision of health providers.
Meanwhile, the state’s Primary Healthcare Commissioner, Dr Ibrahim Dangana, said the Delivering Innovation in Self-care project was being implemented by the state and the SFH.
Represented by the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Dr Abdullahi Imam, he said the results achieved in these past 33 months showed that the self-injectable method is acceptable to a large number of women who were engaged, noting that they have also given testimonies on how it helped them to space their families and improve their reproductive health.
Dangana said, “For the state, we support any method or solutions that can improve the lives of our women. The essence of family planning service is to allow women to space their children so that they can have as many as they want when they want it.
“We intend to ask the partners to expand this service to other local government areas and we also intend to provide a lot of funds for healthcare workers to be trained in counselling and in the delivery of self-care service.”
