The Study of Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Medical Abortion in Women at a Tertiary centre

Unsafe abortions have devastating effects on women’s health. Despite the liberalization of abortion services since the enactment of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 the rate of unsafe abortion is high in developing countries. This study was conducted to access the knowledge, attitude and practice of medical abortion in Indian women. This is a cross sectional study, carried out from August 2010 to July 2012. In our study we found that most common cause of medical abortion is failure of contraception (38.1%) followed by unplanned pregnancy (32.38%). Most patients got information about medicine from media (45.55%) and family members (18.85%) . Most women were prescribed medicine by their family members (37.14%) and chemist (42.38%). Only 10.48% women took medicine after doctor’s prescription. Most patients took medicine at home (89.5%) and arrived to the hospital after complication arose. To conclude, there is a need to increase awareness and availability of safe abortion services in general population. There is also a need to increase knowledge about availability of various contraceptive methods and their correct method of use among couples so as to decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies which leads to unsafe abortion.