Unintended live birth versus abortion: What factors affect the choices of Vietnamese women and couples?

This paper takes advantage of "calendar" data gathered in the VNDHS II undertaken in 1997 in which female survey respondents were asked to report all pregnancies in the three years prior to the survey the outcome of each pregnancy and if terminated whether the termination was spontaneous or induced. Experience shows that survey respondents especially in countries where abortion is illegal and/or highly stigmatized tend to grossly under-report abortions. It is estimated that only about one third of abortions were reported in the World Fertility Surveys (WFS) undertaken in 40 developing countries. Jones and Forrest (1992) estimated that only 35 per cent of the actual abortions in the four-year period prior to the 1988 United States National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) were reported in the survey. However abortion is legal in Viet Nam and thus although some abortions undoubtedly went unreported in the VNDHS II the survey provides one of the better opportunities available to understand the factors underlying decisions by women in a developing country setting to terminate unintended pregnancies or carry them to term as unintended live births. (excerpt)