Nine in 10 abortion patients in Mexico City receive contraceptive counseling after their procedure

摘要

The vast majority of women who obtained a public-sector legal abortion in Mexico City received contraceptive counseling after their procedure and decided on a method to use, according to a survey conducted at three public health facilities. Women who had been attended by a female physician were far more likely than those attended by a male physician to be offered postabortion contraception and to choose a method (odds ratios, 3.0 and 6.3, respectively). In addition, the odds of having been offered a method were higher among women who had had a surgical abortion than among those who had had a medication abortion (5.4), and lower among women who had visited a general hospital than among those who had terminated their pregnancy at a primary health center (0.1). Since the legalization of abortion in Mexico City in 2007, local Ministry of Health facilities have provided free or low-cost first-trimester abortion services. To gauge the quality of the family planning counseling that surgical and medication abortion patients receive, and to determine whether service quality is associated with women's characteristics and the circumstances of their procedure, the investigators surveyed 402 women aged 18-46 at a general hospital, a maternity hospital and a primary health center between September and December 2009. Three-fifths of public-sector abortions in Mexico City that year were performed at these three locations.