Ministry of information and broadcasting may have decided to restrict condom ads but if a study in the reputed journal The Lancet Global Health is anything to go by, India perhaps needs more condom ads not less.
The study led by researchers from the Mumbai-based International Institute of Population Sciences has found that in 2015, half of the 48·1 million pregnancies in India were unintended. Of these 15·6 million (14·1–17·3 million) pregnancies ended in abortions.
More than 75% abortions happened in homes, and most of these abortions were by women obtaining medical abortion drugs from chemists and informal vendors without prescriptions. The study used data from multiple sources including a representative survey of health facilities and national drug sales data.
Social taboo, lack of abortion facilities trained manpower are some of the reasons that limit access to abortion services in India. Most abortions were found to occur outside health facilities using drugs, whereas 64% of all facility-based abortions were surgical.
The study concluded: “The barriers that continue to impede women’s access to safe abortion services within the formal health-care system include a shortage of number of trained providers, legal impediments, lack of privacy and confidentiality, and insistence on specific contraception as a precondition for providing abortion services. Even where trained providers exist, most do not give women a choice of options, whereas data from studies have shown that women overwhelmingly prefer medical abortion. Furthermore, over-medicalised service delivery protocols are in use for medical abortion, which is approved for use only up to 9 gestational weeks in India.”
