Australia Study: 70 Percent of Women Seeking Abortions Used Contraception

International   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jun 9, 2008   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Australia Study: 70 Percent of Women Seeking Abortions Used Contraception

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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 9
, 2008

Canberra, Australia (LifeNews.com) — Abortion advocates say the use of contraception is an excellent way to reduce the number of abortions and have demanded that taxpayers fund more contraception efforts. However, a new Australia study shows two-thirds of the women seeking abortions did so because their contraception failed.

The study included 3,400 women who went to an abortion business in Adelaide over the course of a decade.

Conducted by Flinders University professors Wendy Abigail, Charmaine Power and Ingrid Belan, it found 70 percent of the women seeking abortions used birth control.

About 36 percent of the women and their partners used condoms to prevent pregnancy, another 28 percent used hormonal methods such as the birth control pill and three percent were relying on natural family planning.

Although the study makes it appear women still become pregnant and rely on abortions when contraception fails, the authors spun the results to the Adelaide Now newspaper by saying it proved abortion isn’t used as a method of birth control.

"It is often reported in the media that women are irresponsible with contraception usage and that pregnancy terminations are used as a form of contraception," they said. "The majority of women in this study used some form of contraception at the time of conception."

The study will be published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health.

It also found a significant increase in the number of women aged 30 to 50 who are having abortions — mirroring a trend in the United States.

While younger women more often account for abortions, older women experiencing an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy are more frequently having abortions when they are through having children.