New insights about attitudes towards contraception among a population of U.S. women at risk for an unintended pregnancy: Qualitative data from a sample of women obtaining abortions

More than half (52%) of unintended pregnancies in the United States occur among the 10.7% of women using no contraceptive method. Using a qualitative sample of women obtaining abortions in the U.S. in 2008 (n=49), we explored women’s attitudes towards and beliefs about contraception and found that even though two-thirds of the sample had been pregnant before, 32 respondents perceived themselves to have a low likelihood of becoming pregnant. Respondents’ reasons for this perceived low likelihood feel into three categories: invulnerability to pregnancy, perceptions of sub-fecundity, and lack of attention to the possibility of conception. About half of the women discussed more than one theme when explaining why they perceived themselves to have a low likelihood of becoming pregnant at that time. For some women who were using contraception, their perception was based on their contraceptive use although the majority who fell into this subgroup were using contraception inconsistently or incorrectly. We propose a modified Health Belief Model (Hall 2012) to account for women’s ambivalence about the need for contraception based on our results. Further research is needed to quantify who believe they are not at risk of pregnancy and their reasons why to better address women’s misconceptions about fecundity and conception.