Family planning perspectives
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Two-thirds of a sample of 535 young women from the state of Washington who became pregnant as adolescents had been sexually abused: Fifty-five percent had been molested, 42 percent had been victims of attempted rape and 44 percent had been raped. Compared with adolescent women who became pregnant but had not been abused, sexually victimized teenagers began intercourse a year earlier, were more likely to have used drugs and alcohol and were less likely to practice contraception. The abused adolescents were also more likely to have been hit, slapped or beaten by a partner and to have exchanged sex for money, drugs or a place to stay. Young women in the abused group were also more likely to report that their own children had been abused or had been taken from them by Child Protective Services.
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Analysis of data from the 1988 National Survey of Family Growth--corrected for the underreporting of abortion--reveals that contraceptive failure during the first year of use remains a serious problem in the United States, contributing substantially to unintended pregnancy. The pill continues to be the most effective reversible method for which data were available (8% of users accidentally became pregnant during the first year of use), followed by the condom (15%). Periodic abstinence is the method most likely to fail (26%), but accidental pregnancy is also relatively common among women using spermicides (25%). Failure rates vary more by user characteristics such as age, marital status and poverty status than by method, suggesting the extent to which failure results from improper and irregular use rather than from the inherent limitations of the method.