Intimate partner violence, abortion, and unintended pregnancy:

This paper describes how intimate partner violence (IVP) is associated with unintended pregnancy and abortion in a primarily Muslim community of 500,000 peoples in Mumbai. In-depth interviews were conducted with randomly selected 45 married women visiting at urban health center across various domains during 2009-2010. Out of all, 31 women reported frequent verbal and 19 physical violence in past one year. The most frequent reported forms of violence included, high tone abusive, beatings, and forced sex. Out of all, 39 women reported virginal discharge, 6 miscarriages, 3 infant deaths and 41 mental distresses. A “Women’s Health Clinic” was organized at urban health center under RISHTA program to treat women’s gynecological problems. Individual women presenting vaginal discharge at the WHC are randomized into receiving individual counseling (IC), group couples intervention (CI), both (IC and CI) and a control group. The 886 Women’s Structured Survey (WSS) was administered to assess women at baseline, six-month and one-year post intervention from 2009-2012. On the major outcome variables have shown that the intervention group shows better Reproductive Health (p <.001), greater knowledge about STIs (p <.001), less sexual problems, (p <.001) better treatment seeking in health problems (p <.001) and no miscarriages and infant death.