NCJ Number
216647
Journal
Journal of Youth and Adolescence Volume: 35 Issue: 6 Dated: December 2006 Pages: 903-911
Date Published
December 2006
Length
9 pages
Annotation
Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were analyzed to determine which demographic, psychological, education, and family variables predicted whether a pregnant adolescent girl decided to abort an unwanted pregnancy or have the birth.
Abstract
Contrary to expectations, none of the demographic or education variables and few of the psychological and family-closeness variables were related to the decision to abort the pregnancy. Adolescents who decided to have an abortion were more likely than adolescents who had the birth to seek psychological counseling, and they reported more sleeping problems and more frequent marijuana use. The decision to have an abortion or have the birth was not associated with the variables of cigarette smoking, frequency of alcohol use, and problems with parents based on alcohol use after controls were used; however, without the control variables, significant associations were observed with these variables. This suggests the importance of using psychological and situational controls in studies of the consequences of abortion. Data were obtained from wave I and wave II of the restricted-user datasets from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. This was a longitudinal, nationally representative, probability-based survey of adolescents in grades 7 through 12 between 1994 and 1996. All participants in the current study were adolescents in grades 7 through 11 who completed both wave I in 1995 and wave II in 1996 and experienced a pregnancy described as "not wanted" or "probably not wanted" between 1995 and 1996 (n=130) that was resolved through abortion (n=65) or delivery (n=65). 2 tables and 65 references