Moving from Many Missed Opportunities to No Missed Opportunities: Post-Abortion Family Planning among Urban Women in Uttar Pradesh, India

Jennet Arcara, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Lisa M. Calhoun, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Ranajit Sengupta, International Center for Research on Women (ICRW)

While post-abortion family planning (PAFP) is intended to help women break the cycle of unplanned pregnancies and abortions, too often women do not receive PAFP services due to barriers in the health system. To identify missed opportunities in PAFP, we use data from women, health facilities, providers, and exit interview clients in 6 cities that were collected as part of the impact evaluation of the Urban Health Initiative in Uttar Pradesh, India. Among the 362 women (2.6%) that report an abortion between 2009-2014, 37.6% reported receiving FP information or counseling after the last abortion and 18.7% report receiving a FP method, referral, or prescription. While FP counseling has increased recently, reports of counseling by clients are still lower than what facilities and providers report and provision of FP for post-abortion clients continues to be low. These results highlight missed opportunities to integrate PAFP into abortion or post-abortion care visits.