Study Shows Married Women Are Aborting The Most In Kenya

A study by Marie Stopes Kenya in one of its six clinics in Nairobi shows that 22.4 pc of women seeking abortion services were either married or living with a partner.

The study published on November 25, 2019, in the journal Plos coincides data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics indicating almost a half of pregnancies among married women in Kenya are not planned.

Studies in Nairobi show that the main reason for these induced abortions are due to socio-economic stress and lack of support from partners.

In the study, also involving University of California, about half of 353 study women said abortion was illegal in Kenya while a fifth did not know whether it was legal or not. Abortion is illegal in Kenya unless the mother’s health is at risk, though this is not a major determinant among pharmacies selling abortion pills.

The only reason a pharmacy attendants would deny clients abortion services, the study showed, was not health of the mother but their inability to pay.

The current study which was assessing the experiences of women opting for either pills (medication) or surgical abortions at the Marie Stopes clinic, found that the highest number of aborting women were single, aged between 20 and 24 years and were likely to be terminating their first pregnancy.