Child marriage is one of the major public health challenges and a grave violations of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Worldwide, more than 60 million women are estimated to be married before they reach the age of 18 years, and more than one-third of these women live in South Asia. As a consequence of these teenage marriages, adolescents are exposed to unsafe abortions and fatal complications. Unsafe abortions are one of the important causes of maternal mortality and morbidity globally. It remains one of the most neglected sexual and reproductive health problems of the current era.
In comparison with adults, adolescents are more vulnerable to undergo an unsafe abortion. The adolescent population is more likely to delay the abortion, resort to unskilled persons to perform it, use dangerous methods, and present late when complications arise. Therefore, it is the need of the hour that such type of research studies should be conducted to find out the prevalence of adolescent marriages among women of reproductive age group (15-45 years) and determinants of unsafe abortions among them.
It was a cross-sectional descriptive study conducted from 1st January to 31st March 2018 (3 months). The study area was one of the urbanized villages of South Delhi. All women of the reproductive age group (15-49 years), residents of the urbanized villages were considered eligible for inclusion. Severely ill, debilitated, and mentally unstable women were excluded from the present study. In the present study, simple random sampling was used to select study participants.
A total of 320 women had participated in the present study. It shows that the maximum (68%) women were in the 20-39 year age group. About 22.5% of women were illiterate. It was found that 159 (49.7%) of the women married in teenagers. The majority (95%) women were Hindus. Most of the women residing in Delhi originally belong to some other states. Maximum (79%) women were nonworking. Most of the women (85%) had their husbands educated up to the middle and above level of schooling. More than half (56%) of study subjects belonged to upper-middle socioeconomic status.
The majority (82.2%) of the women were of age group 25-49 yrs. While 17.8% of the study subjects were of 15-24 year age group. 49.7% of the women accepted that they had solemnized their marriages in teenagers. About 40% of women were having a history of abortion in their lifetime and one-fourth (25%) women underwent induced abortion. Among induced abortion cases, more than half (54%) of the study subjects underwent unsafe abortions, and more common was in the adolescent age group.
Thus, it was concluded that Teenage pregnancy and unsafe induced abortion are common in an urbanized village. Preventive strategies such as a reduction in unsafe abortion, raising awareness regarding various contraceptive measures, reduction in unmet need for family planning, and accessibility of safe abortion services are urgently required.
Reference: Kumari S, Kishore J, Pandit V et al. Teenage marriages and induced abortion among women of reproductive age group (15-49 years) residing in an urbanized village of Delhi. Ind J Youth Adol Health 2019; 6(1): 15-20. full pdf. Published on November 18, 2019. Accessed August 13, 2020.