Adolescent Girls and Abortion

Investigation of the prevalence and causes and of legal abortion of teenage married mothers in Iran

Background The therapeutic abortion law, in accordance with the fatwa issued by our Muslim jurisprudent approved by the parliament in 2005, has made major developments in dealing with cases of therapeutic abortions. Objective This study aimed at identifying the prevalence and causes of therapeutic abortion requests to the Legal Medicine Organization of Fars province, Shiraz, by pregnant teenager mothers. Methods This study was a retrospective, cross-sectional, descriptive survey. In this study, all documents related to therapeutic abortion requests from the Legal Medicine Organization of Fars province (southern Iran) from 2006 to 2013 were investigated. The total sample size included 1664, out of which 142 were teenagers. Sampling was carried out using Convenience method. Data were analyzed using SPSS statistical software, version 16, descriptive statistics and χ2. Results In this study, 142 mothers were under 20 years of age (8.5%). The prevalence of fetal abortion license requests was 110 (78.6%) and for maternal causes was 30 (21.4%). There was no significant statistical correlation between fetal causes in different years (p = 0.083). The most common causes of fetal abortion request were for thalassemia treatment in 78 cases (79.9%) followed by fetal malformations (20.9%); also, the most common maternal cause was thalassemia in 14 cases (51.9%) and depression in three cases (1.11%), respectively. Conclusion Our results showed that after approval of therapeutic abortion law, requests for therapeutic abortion due to fetal causes are extensively increasing. There is still a need for coordination of judicial, medical and legal authorities for prompt notification.