Teenage Pregnancy BIG Concern Worldwide

Teenagers becoming pregnant at higher risk of further pregnancies

One out of the four young people in England and Wales who underwent abortion were pregnant earlier, as far as the recent results found by the University of East Anglia (UEA).
Findings more than 2 decades data the study shows, for the first time, the number of young women aged 15-19 going through an abortion who had experienced at least one earlier pregnancy, leading in either a birth - live or stillbirth - or abortion.

The finders analyzed countries abortion numbers for England and Wales from 1992 to 2013, in print by the Office of National Statistics and the Department of Health. They intended to extra correctly approximate the figure of youth getting an abortion who have had one or more prior pregnancies. Prior findings have reported the figure of earlier pregnancies or abortions, but have not been able to account for the proportion of young women who felt both.

In 2013, almost 23 per cent of adolescent women having an abortion had been pregnant earlier. A less than 5%, had two or more earlier pregnancies, though this number almost doubled between 1992 (937) and 2002 (1823).

In this time, the number of teenagers having an abortion as a result of a following pregnancy grew by 33 per cent, since 1992 to 2013. Most of this increase took place earlier than 2004 and the figure seems to have stabilized. The number pointed in 2008, when 9834 had acknowledged a previous pregnancy.

Available in the Journal of Adolescent Health, the result show that teenager who become pregnant are at a greater risk of further pregnancies in their teenaged years. While the teenage outset rate in England and Wales has declined in current years and is currently at a record low, further reductions are still needed to bring it in row with additional Western European nations.

The authors say that in order to do this efforts need to focus not just on protecting first-time pregnancies but also to hold pregnant and parenting youngsters to better manage their reproductive lives. They call for higher stress to be placed on developing more sophisticated and effective interventions to protect upcoming accidental pregnancies amid this crowd, like helping the young women to find a contraceptive technique that greatest suits them, creating it easy for them to obtain this and providing ongoing support.
Head researcher Lisa McDaid, of the School of Health Sciences, worked with colleagues Prof Jacqueline Collier of the School of Psychology and Prof Mary Jane Platt from UEA's Norwich Medical School. Ms McDaid said that as not all teenage conceptions are first-time conceptions, it had been important to accurately identify the number of teenagers who become pregnant for a second time or more.

"This information will help to guide more targeted interventions to continue the downward trend in pregnancy and to monitor the effectiveness of current sexual health priorities on reducing conceptions and unwanted pregnancies among this age group," said Ms McDaid.

"The continuing high proportion of teenagers who have an abortion following one or more previous pregnancies highlights the complexity of these young women's lives and we need to recognize that the conditions of every pregnancy might be very dissimilar. Our results clearly demonstrate that young women who become pregnant can be measured a high-risk crowd for succeeding unplanned, mistimed, or unwanted pregnancies, emphasizing the significance of embedding preventative actions and behaviors among this group after a birth or abortion."

In 2013 responsibility for commission society contraceptive services moved from the NHS to local authorities, while maternity and abortion services are the duty of NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups. Ms McDaid said this separation could make it harder for youngsters to right of entry support and contraception when they most need it.
"All organizations will need to work together so that youth have an efficient contraceptive plan in place that meets their needs after a pregnancy, along with getting ongoing support to encourage up-take and continuation, and improved access to emergency contraception," said Ms McDaid.

The research builds on a earlier study conducted by Prof Collier, who said further work was still needed to set up an extra precise and widespread picture of subsequent teen pregnancies and their patterns according to the outcome of the pregnancy.
"The teenaged years are a unique time where a number of different changes and challenges are faced," told Prof Collier. "In-depth work to explore teenagers' experiences of subsequent pregnancies and the reasons that pressurize their sexual and contraceptive behaviours is needed to increase understanding of the complexities of the issues involved."

'Earlier pregnancies among young women having an abortion in England and Wales', Lisa McDaid, Jacqueline Collier and Mary Jane Platt, is available in the Journal of Adolescent Health.