Contraception

It sounds obvious - pregnancies could be avoided by using contraception. But 15 million unwanted [pregnancies:miscarriages] could be avoided annually in 35 low- and [middle-income:high] countries if women did in fact use modern contraception. That's according to a study in the journal Human Reproduction.Unwanted pregnancy has a wide range of serious consequences. Women may have to stop their education or employment. They might [pursue:pursuit] unsafe abortions. And they can face disability, disease and death as a result of the pregnancy.To determine barriers to the use of contraception, researchers [compared:differentiated] surveys and [interviews:questions] of nearly 13,000 women who became pregnant unintentionally.They compared the data to that from more than a hundred thousand women who were sexually active and did not want to be pregnant.For women who were sexually active, did not want to be pregnant, but did not use contraception, 37 percent feared health side effects from contraception. Twenty-two percent said they or their partner objected. These issues outweighed cost or availability. Women also underestimated the risks of getting pregnant from unprotected sex.