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  • Title: Abortions in relation to age, coital frequency, and fecundity.
    Author: Trost JE.
    Journal: Arch Sex Behav; 1986 Dec; 15(6):505-9. PubMed ID: 3800641.
    Abstract:
    Abortion rates show variations by age in the United States. This article addresses the question of age variations in abortions. Since the probability of pregnancy is increased in direct proportion to increased coital frequency, age and coitus-specific abortion rates are calculated. Since the probability of pregnancy is related to fecundity, age and fecundity abortion rates are also calculated. When combining coital frequency and fecundity with the age-specific abortion rates, the variation by age disappears for all women except teen-agers. In the US, abortion rates show variations by age. This article addresses the question of age variations in abortions. The abortion rate is a better mearsure of abortion frequency than the ratio. It relates the number of abortions to the number of women in fertile ages (normally 15-44 years) and is not influenced by changes in the birthrates as are the ratios. Since abortions vary by age, a common measure is the age-specific abortion rate. Table 1 shows that the abortion rate is highly related to age; except for the youngest age group, the lower the age the greater the number of abortions. Yet, as Manniche (1986) emphasizes, the very young and the very old have lower coital frequincies and, thus, are at a lower risk of becoming pregnant. Younger women have much higher age-and-coitus-specific abortion rates than older women when coital frequency is considered. The abortion rates for teenagers become much higher than among nonteenagers. When one considers only abortion rates for married women the picture is similar. The younger the women, the higher the abortion rates. When coital frequencies are introduced (from the Kinsey studies, Bebhard and Johnson, 1979) the tendency, younger age-higher frequency, is the same but differences in abortion rates between age groups are decreased somewhat. Fecundity-adjusted, age-specific abortion rates have been calculated in Tables III and IV. Evidently the differences between the age classes decrease when one accounts for differential fertility. When an adjustment for coital frequency and fecundity is combined, the differences between the age classes change considerably. Among all women, i.e., nonmarries and marrieds, teenagers have a very high abortion rate, while other women differ much less. Among married women only, there are almost no age-related differences in abortion rates when one adjusts for coital frequencies and fecundity.
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