Unintended pregnancies and prenatal, delivery and postnatal outcomes among young women in the Philippines

Abstract

The study examined the association between pregnancy intention among young Filipino women and prenatal, delivery and postnatal outcomes. Data were drawn from the 2013 Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality Study, a nationally representative survey of 19,178 Filipino youth aged between 15 and 24. The analytic sample consists of 2,264 live births in the two years prior to the survey. The survey shows that 38.7 per cent of births were unintended at the time of conception: 23.1 per cent were mistimed while 15.6 per cent were unwanted. Proportionately, more unintended births were borne by mothers who were teenagers, unmarried, college-educated, urban and Metro Manila residents than their counterparts. There were also more unintended births among first-order births than among subsequent births. Logistic regression results show that compared with mothers of intended births, mothers of mistimed and unwanted births were more likely to have attempted to abort their pregnancy. Mothers of mistimed births are also less likely to have begun prenatal care within the first trimester of pregnancy than mothers of intended births. The findings suggest that unintended pregnancy is an important consideration in interventions aimed at improving maternal and child health but further studies are needed to fully explore the dynamics between unintended pregnancy and maternal health outcomes.