Abortion among Chinese teens, unmarried woman on rise

Pregnant young and unmarried women in China are taking the abortion route more frequently than ever before.

New York, May 14 : Pregnant young and unmarried women in China are taking the abortion route more frequently than ever before.

Interestingly, the majority of such cases have been reported from Shanghai and parts of Beijing, The New York Times reports.

It does not stop here, as most of these women, comprising of migrant workers, urban professionals, students and prostitutes, are having multiple abortions.

"We can see it beginning in larger cities and the smaller cities, even down to the developing counties," Gu Baochang, a leading scholar on family planning policy at Renmin University in Beijing, was quoted, as saying.

"More and more abortions are for unmarried women. It is a very clear trend," he added.

According to health experts in the country, the lack of sex education and understanding about reproductive health and contraception has been the core reason behind the increasing rate.

The report says that while the Chinese Government has focused on policing the reproductive lives of married women, it has paid far less attention to educating single women about sex, partly because of cultural resistance.

Another crucial factor adding to this is the rise in premarital sex, which has now become common in urban areas, resulting in pregnancy, and consequently more abortion cases are surfacing.

"There is a blind spot in sex education in China," said Xu Jin, director of a clinic, which performed 65 abortions in March. Of those women, 42 were having at least their second abortion. One woman had her sixth.

Doctor Deng Jun, who runs a counselling program at a Beijing hospital, was quoted as saying that single, pregnant women comprise almost one-third of her clients.

Another doctor, who has performed abortions at a public hospital in eastern China for nearly two decades, said: "All the time, my colleagues say they are seeing young girls who have had five or six abortions".

The abortion rate has been on rise despite the fact that having multiple abortions are more susceptible to certain health problems, including infertility.

A recent survey of 8,846 single and married women who had undergone abortions at 10 hospitals in Beijing found that 36 percent had had more than one abortion within six months, the paper said.

ANI