Unplanned Pregnancies: Are they Unwanted?

The other day I was reading my Glamour magazine and came across an article that highlighted a study about the attitudes of young women toward unplanned pregnancies. It was surprising to me to see that so many young women did not want to get pregnant, yet still chose to forego any contraceptive methods. It was even more surprising that their reasoning was, "well, if I get pregnant that wouldn't be the worst thing." The study showed that because our society is so career oriented a lot of young women don't feel like they can start a family anytime soon, but yet they still have the yearning for a family. By pushing women so hard to be equal to men in every respect, are we pushing their natural instinct to parent out of focus? If this is true, then the ones who are really going to lose are the children coming out of these unplanned pregnancies.

Study published in Glamour Magazine: Are You Playing Baby Roulette?

Study done by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy

Surveyed 897 women between the ages of 18-39

• 50% of American pregnancies are unplanned, and ¾ of those pregnancies are in women 29 and younger.
• Women with a college degree are more likely to experience an unintended pregnancy than those who haven’t attended college.
• The number of unmarried women who had sex in the previous three months with no contraception rose by 36% between 1995-2008.
• While 86% of unmarried young women feel that pregnancy should be planned, only about half are using birth control consistently (however, 88% said it is important that they not get pregnant right now).
• The study found that young women have a strong longing for motherhood: More than half of them said they would like to be a mom right now “if things in their life were different.”
• And even among those who said it was important to avoid pregnancy, 20% of women (and 43% of men) admitted that they’d be at least a little happy if they found out they were going to have a baby.
• Women who conceive through a one night stand are most likely to abort (19% of never married women who have an abortion say they had “no relationship at all” with the father).
• 65% of women said that one reason they didn’t use contraception when they had sex was that their partner would “be there” for them if they ended up getting pregnant.
• “There’s this expectation that you’re with the guy you’re going to have children with anyway, so if you start a little earlier, it’s not a problem—maybe it will even accelerate the wedding bells.”
• 60% of cohabiting couples who have a baby break up within five years; if the pregnancy was unplanned, the odds that you’ll part ways roughly doubles.
• 44% of women ages 18-29 have the misguided belief that “it doesn’t matter whether you use birth control or not; when it is your time to get pregnant it will happen.” A majority also believed the following misconceptions:
• Long-term use of hormonal methods like the Pill will likely lead to cancer
• The IUD is bound to cause infection
• Contraception in general, even the pill, is highly ineffective
• 59% of women think they could be infertile and therefore cannot get pregnant
• National Center for Health Statistics reports only 8% of 18-29 year olds actually are infertile
• Mothers to be who have an unplanned pregnancy are less likely to get proper prenatal care