The termination of adolescent out-of-wedlock pregnancies and the prospects for their primary prevention

Abstract

Interviews were carried out with about 200 single adolescents who had undergone an elective abortion at a municipal hospital in the Metropolitan Area of New York City. The purpose of these interviews was to identify the special psychosocial problems encountered with adolescents in this situation and to establish the dynamic configuration of their behavior, their attitudes, and their responses to an elective abortion. In the course of these contacts (lasting about 15 to 20 minutes on the average), it was established that attitudes toward abortion are secondary phenomena in that they are governed by, or are derivatives of, what is tentatively being called vectors of orientation. Seven of these vectors are listed and described. The central problem emerging from these interviews is the issue of the primary prevention of the need for abortion. In the current cultural climate, this is tantamount to ensuring systematic contraceptive practice by adolescents. Among the difficulties that seem to obstruct the attainment of this goal is a limitation of the adolescent's still developing cognition, which results in his predominant concern with the immediate effects of his doings to the exclusion of their potential effects. This fact has been largely ignored in practice. It has only recently been identified in the scientific literature as figurative thinking. This limitation of cognition has implications for all preventive health care.