Contraceptive discontinuation and the unintended childbearing in India

The frequent contraceptive discontinuation among spacing method users, not only poses women
to a very high risk of unintended pregnancy but also exhibits the lesser conscious approach of
women to control their childbearing in India. In this context a large number of births preceded by
a contraceptive discontinuation/failure may be reported as unintended retrospectively.
Utilizing calendar data of National Family Health Survey (2005-06) this paper tries to estimate
the proportion of pregnancies reported as unintended/intended following the contraceptive
discontinuation and associated characteristics of the women.
The results suggest that 71% of the pregnancies following a method failure were reported as
unintended in comparison to 25% pregnancies which were not preceded by any contraception.
Among women who discontinued their method for reasons other than pregnancy, around 50%
reported their respective birth as unintended. The results from multivariate logistic regression
hint that the time-elapsed between contraceptive discontinuation and the index birth, age at the
time of conception, parity and place of the residence are the significant predictors of reporting a
pregnancy as intended/unintended retrospectively.