Knowledge Regarding Unsafe Abortion and Legalization of Abortion among Adolescents

Abstract

Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) defines abortion as pregnancy termination before 20 weeks gestation or a fetus born weighing less than 500gm. Nearly half of all abortions worldwide are unsafe. Each year more than one lakh abortions are done in Nepal and the number of women seeking abortion services is in increasing trend. It has been identified as one of the major public health problems in Nepal
Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study design was conducted among 448 adolescent students of grade 10 in 7 different schools of different municipalities in Sarlahi district. Simple random sampling using 50% prevalence and structured-self-administered questionnaires were used. Data was entered and analysed by using SPSS version 16.0.
Results: Among all 448 respondents, it was found that 1.3% of them were married and only 41.3% of respondents had adequate knowledge of abortion, similarly only 46.2% know about its legalization in Nepal. Among them, the majority was male respondents but adequate knowledge of abortion was found high among females i.e. 51.14% and adequate knowledge of its legalization in Nepal was found high among males i.e. 58.75%.
Conclusions: This is to conclude that, there is no significant relationship between different variable of respondents and their knowledge on Abortion and its legalization in Nepal.
Keywords: Abortion; adolescents; knowledge; legalization; unsafe.