Talk:Unintended pregnancy

Starting with the lead

The second sentence effectively says that almost 90 percent of those unintended pregnancies which did not lead to abortion instead led to unintended births. This seems an incredible assertion on the face of it. Almost 90 percent of the women whose unintended pregnancies were not aborted were instead forced to give birth!!?? Just what what exactly does unintended birth mean as it is used in this sentence? Badmintonhist (talk) 20:02, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

I would suggest that if the meaning of "unintended birth" as it is used in the present context cannot be explained to the reader, then that particular asserted factoid should be scrapped. Badmintonhist (talk) 06:29, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Unintended births are births that were not intended. (There was not intention to have a child, but they did.) I am not sure what the question is here. One can not be pregnant forever - the pregnancy ends within a certain amount of time, either by induced abortion, spontaneous abortion, birth or death. Zodon (talk) 02:05, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

There is an intention to have a child if a woman, however unintended her pregnancy might have originally been, chooses not get an abortion when abortion is legally available to her. Badmintonhist (talk) 00:11, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Which presumes that abortion is available (legally, financially, safely, etc.), which is not the case for a large proportion of world population, and that person acknowledges the pregnancy, etc. Birth does not require intention, it will happen regardless of intention.

This is taken directly from the source. Can you suggest an alternative phrasing that is supported by sources? Zodon (talk) 06:25, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Again, I would suggest not using the term "unintended birth" at all. The statistics presented on the results of unintended pregnancies in the "Incidence" subsection of our article clearly show that ALL, or very nearly all, births resulting from unintended pregnancies are being classified, incorrectly in my opinion, as "unintended births." In other words, if a woman becomes unintentionally pregnant and decides to give birth, despite the availability of legal and safe abortion, our statistics categorize this as an "unintended birth." This is hardly neutral wording. Badmintonhist (talk) 13:59, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Family Planning

I think the section "Family Planning" can be interpreted as sexist, especially the first sentence which argues that having a baby is an important life in a female's life as well as that of her partner and family. This completely disregards the huge fact that having a baby is equally major for men and women alike, women simply go through nine months of carrying it, after those nine months are up to 80 years of life to be responsible for, which is the actual important part of having babies. I think the sentence should be rephrased to represent a view that accepts pregnancy and having babies as important parts of human life in our society completely unrelated to gender. If I'm going too far with this, that's okay, I was just personally bothered by it and thought it should be changed without knowing what to.

I'd also argue that it's not important or relevant enough to the article to even stay there, but yeah, I'm not sure what Wikipedia's policies are on that. Styrofoamblade (talk) 00:35, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Untitled

I edited out some sections in 'Incidence'. As the thread does not deal with psychological, physiological aftermath of having 'abortions', but more about unintended pregnancies. I find it biased, so I removed it. It's sources arent very objective either. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kiesel14615 (talk • contribs) 08:35, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

I presume you are talking about this edit removing sourced material from Induced abortions section?

Not sure what you mean by the sources are "not objective." The Institute of Medicine is highly regarded, using rigorous techniques of peer review, etc. Please see WP:RS and WP:MEDRS.

The material in question is consistent with the coverage in Abortion#Safety, which provides several additional sources. To help address your concern added some of those sources to this article. I hope this helps.

Since induced abortion is one of the major results of unintended pregnancies, it makes sense to give it brief coverage in this article. Per WP:summary style, this article just covers major or particularly relevant material, leaving the details for the main article(s) on the topic.

Since this article covers a medical condition, it is particularly relevant to cover the positive and negative outcomes of abortion from a medical standpoint. Hence the coverage of physical and psychological aftermath of abortion. (Similar to the coverage given of births - where psychological as well as physical aftermaths are covered).

What significant, relevant point of view, supported by reliable sources do you think is missing? (Often adding coverage of the major missing viewpoint is preferred to trying to remove coverage of major, well cited viewpoints.) Zodon (talk) 10:44, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Unintended pregnancies cause deaths

A user has a couple of times questioned this line of the summary.

Unintended pregnancy is also a major cause of maternal[4] and infant deaths.[1]

Please be aware that there are many types of causation. Things need not be the direct cause of death in order to be a cause.

Also, there are two aspects here: 1) unintended pregnancies are more likely to result in maternal or infant death than intended ones (i.e. there is a higher death rate), and 2) unintended pregnancies result in many deaths (i.e., there are a large absolute number of deaths resulting - a significant proportion of deaths of the given type).

If you think the phrasing needs improvement, please suggest a better way to say it. Zodon (talk) 07:46, 26 April 2012 (UTC

Yeah, a better way to say it , basically THE ONLY way to say it, THE CORRECT way to say it. . . would be that unintended pregnancies are STATISTICALLY LINKED to higher rates of maternal and infant death. There are all sorts of attendant factors that may cause rates of maternal and infant death to be greater among women whose pregnancies are unintended (poorer maternal health in general, lesser access to obstetric care, higher rates of tobacco smoking, drug and alcohol use during pregnancies, congenital diseases, etc.) but that is not the same as the pregnancy causing the death. Badmintonhist (talk) 16:52, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Note that the sentence in question does NOT say higher rates, it says deaths. (You only addressed item 1 above, and the sentence summarizes both.) Unintended pregnancy resulted in 700,000 maternal deaths over a 5 year period, one fifth of the pregnancy related deaths during that period. Likewise it results in many infant deaths, though don't have as many stats on that in the article yet. If one doesn't like the word cause, there are many other ways to say it.

• Unintended pregnancy results in many maternal and infant deaths.
• Unintended pregnancies are responsible for ...
• A large fraction of maternal and infant deaths result from unintended pregnancy.

etc.

From the point of view of public health and preventive medicine, one of the main choice points where something could have been done to prevent these deaths was preventing unintended pregnancy. Zodon (talk) 17:51, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

And how many deaths were caused by intended pregnancies? You're getting your information from sources advocating causes and that can be problematic for encyclopedic copy. I have heard people say that someone died from smoking or that someone drank themselves to death but I have never people say that someone died because her pregnancy was unintentional. Anyone reading an article which says that unintended pregnancies are a major cause of pregnancy related deaths would likely, along with me, be scratching their heads and saying "now what do they actually mean by that?" Badmintonhist (talk) 19:58, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Simple mathematics would give you an estimate of the number caused by intended pregnancies. The difference being intended pregnancies were entered into willingly by the people involved; even if they may not have been aware of the risks, they presumably had some goal or desire that was furthered by the pregnancy. Those who died, took a calculated risk to achieve a benefit and lost, as it where.

Unintended pregnancies are an undesirable state, there are no benefits cited in the literature of which I am aware, just negative impacts. So people look at what are the costs, what are the benefits, what are the costs of prevention, etc. Death is usually regarded as a major negative impact so highlighted it.

Cause of death often isn't even tracked to the level of reliably tracking maternal deaths, much less tracking whether the pregnancy was intended or not. So just because people don't attribute things in that way in casual conversation does not mean that it is not the case. (One might say that somebody died of cholera, rather than that they died because of fecal contamination of the water at the Broad Street pump. Doesn't mean that sanitation doesn't prevent disease.) Zodon (talk) 20:07, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

On the contrary, there are all sorts of references to the possible benefits (as well as to the frequent liabilities) of unintended pregnancies in "literature," though probably not in "the literature" that you concern yourself with, Zodon. A better approach here, I think, instead of scaring people into thinking that unintended pregnancies involve pure liability (as against the absence of any mentioned liability for intended pregnancies), would be to straightforwardly COMPARE for the reader the relative health liabilities of the two. Badmintonhist (talk) 18:50, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Not sure how to make it more of a comparison to intended pregnancy than already is. The whole results section - where it says "increased this," or "reduced that," that is all comparison to pregnancies that are intended. (It would be meaningless to say increased something if don't have a baseline for comparison.)

The risks of pregnancy are implicitly covered here by the comparison coverage. (e.g., if 1/5 of maternal deaths are due to unintended pregnancies, then the rest of them are due to intended ones, and the total is the total of maternal deaths.) So the article mentions both some overall statistics, and a lot of the risks of pregnancy. If more complete coverage is desirable, a summary of the complications of pregnancy section from the pregnancy article could be added.

If there are known benefits of unintended pregnancy that you think should be covered, then please indicate what the benefits are, with citations to mainstream WP:MEDRS, and we can try to incorporate them. Zodon (talk) 04:10, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I added a sentence to the results section along these lines, with a link to complications of pregnancy. Is that sort of what you had in mind?

Do you think including this template {{Pathology of pregnancy, childbirth and the puerperium}} would be helpful? Zodon (talk) 04:27, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Re your parenthetical that "if 1/5 of maternal deaths are due to unintended pregnancies, then the rest of them are due to intended ones." Something's rotten in the state of Denmark. Since, according to our article, in 1999 about 38% of pregnancies were unintended but only a fifth (20%) of maternal deaths are attributed to unintended pregnancies, then unintended pregnancies would be about half as likely as intended ones to cause maternal death. UP's would be safer for women than IP's. Somehow I doubt that's the case. If it were then we should be lauding the relative safety of unintended pregnancies as against intended ones. Badmintonhist (talk) 20:05, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Seems very simple to me. 1/5 of maternal deals are due to unintended pregnancies as significantly less are brought to term, due to abortion. I've removed the contradiction tag Worm^TT(talk) 16:23, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

This article needs some major editing. Whoever edited it most recently didn't know how to use the wiki code and there are major problems visible. I don't know enough about the subject to make any changes. deepsack (talk) 08:31, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Poor definition of unintended pregnancy

The article's current first sentence "definition" of unintended pregnancy (which for some strange reason has replaced the previous rather pedestrian but markedly better definition) is inadequate. It implies that the set for "unintended pregnancies" encompasses the entire set for "unwanted pregnancies" but this is obviously not the case. As I believe the editor in question noted elsewhere, a pregnancy can be intended but later for any variety of reasons become unwanted. Also why add "mistimed" to the mix? Badmintonhist (talk) 17:12, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

To be clear what is being discussed, I assume by definition you mean.

"Intended pregnancies are those that are clearly and consciously desired at the time of conception. Unintended pregnancies are those that were not wanted at the time of conception." This definition is used because it comes from a high quality source on the subject - the IOM report on unintended pregnancy.

If there are other definitions of unintended pregnancy from main stream, reliable sources that differ significantly from this, then please indicate what they are and the sources involved, and we can either note the varying definitions, or try to improve the definition. This definition replaced the earlier one because the prior informal one lacked any indication of source.

Certainly a pregnancy may become unwanted later, and coverage of that variant makes sense.

Mistimed pregnancies are a subset of unintended pregnancies. That is how the academic literature treats them, therefore that is how the article treats them. They share many characteristics with pregnancies for those who want no more children (disruption of life plans, interfering with education, etc.), but there are also some differences. Zodon (talk) 17:38, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Z O D O N ! ! ! Did you read what I said? I said the "the article's first sentence definition," i.e. the first sentence of the article. That sentence says that "unintended pregnancies include unwanted pregnancies. . ." leading the reader to believe that unintended pregnancies include all unwanted pregnancies. Unintended pregnancies, however, do not include those unwanted pregnancies that were 'originally intended but which later became unwanted. Badmintonhist (talk) 19:12, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

No need to shout. Misread. The listing of related terms that are covered by the article was not meant as a definition. Zodon (talk) 19:47, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Deletion of summary alleging CBALL

An editor has deleted the following portion of the article summary, alleging that it violates WP:CBALL.

Providing family planning services and modern contraceptives to those who do not have access to them would prevent a large proportion of unintended pregnancies and abortions, as well as many maternal and infant deaths, slow environmental degradation, and save billions of dollars a year in health care, education and other costs. Reducing unintended pregnancy also reduces the rate of child abuse, and child poverty and improves maternal and child mental and physical health.

They have not explained in what way it is supposed to do so. It is a summary of material in the article. The views and projections expressed are main stream, pretty standard stuff. The material in the article, as well as the summary cites reliable mainstream sources.

Since this article is within the realms of public health and preventive medicine it is reasonable and expected to cover the measures used or advocated for prevention of the condition, and the results of both the condition and results of prevention.

The second sentence in the deleted section is not even a future projection. It is a statement of what happens when unintended pregnancies are reduced (i.e. it states a connection, without reference to when (future/past) that connection applies.)

If you think it violates CBALL, then explain why, and what is different about the summary the material in the article. Or, since it is just the summary and not the underlying projections that appears to be problem, offer an alternative way of saying the same thing that addresses your concerns. Zodon (talk) 18:13, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Gosh Zodon, there are all sorts of those things wrong with the copy in question, CBALL just being one of them. See WP:SOAP WP:ADVOCACY. Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not advocacy journalism. Even were you editing a relatively noncontroversial article such as Road Traffic Safety you wouldn't want to say "strictly enforcing a 55 mile an hour speed limit would greatly reduce the number of traffic fatalities each year" if you found that conclusion in a reputable publication of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Now, saying "according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration . . ." might be acceptable. Badmintonhist (talk) 20:26, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

This is pretty pedestrian, main stream views for the subject area. It is sourced to reliable sources (IOM, etc.), and easy enough to come up with additional sources.

As far as you highway example, the former wording seems reasonable. It is an obvious and fairly commonplace observation. Of course there might be downsides to such a move, etc. Such a statement in the summary of an article would not call for deletion. Adding qualification with who said, especially if there are major diverging views on the topic could be an improvement.

That is where just deleting something using vague statements that it violates some policy when the violation is not clear is less helpful. Indicating specifically how to improve it - e.g. by doing so, or saying what is needed would be more so. Zodon (talk) 19:18, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

According to the United Nations Population Fund, providing family planning services and modern contraceptives to those who do not have access to them would prevent a large proportion of unintended pregnancies and abortions, as well as many maternal and infant deaths, slow environmental degradation, and save billions of dollars a year in health care, education and other costs. According to the Institute of Medicine and the Brookings Institute, reducing unintended pregnancy also reduces the rate of child abuse, and child poverty and improves maternal and child mental and physical health.

Would this address your concerns? Zodon (talk) 19:35, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly the way it should be worded. Just as an article written in 1972 might have said "According to [whatever organizations] the legalization of abortion in the United States would greatly reduce the rate of children born to unwed mothers." The law of unintended consequences (though sometimes they are not so unintended) can often play tricks on us. Badmintonhist (talk) 19:02, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

References

Intendedness by partners

Recently an editor has deleted the observation that "Partners have similar intentions regarding most pregnancies" because it was unsourced, and then because it was a truism. What is the objection? Deletion for unsourced would imply thought unlikely to be verifiable, whereas truism would not need verification. The reason the observation is there is that there are cases where partner intentions differ, and this has implications for prevention, etc. However to just talk about differing intentions without saying that that is the exception would create a false impression - violate NPOV, etc.

One might also wonder about what effect only looking at women's intention status, as some studies do, has on the results. Again, observing that intention status is usually similar helps to give perspective to that observation.

I know of sources to support this similarity of intendedness, if that is the issue, intend to incorporate them presently. Zodon (talk) 23:46, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Is that the same as "similarity of intention"? This is, of course, no big deal, however, the pertinent fact in the sentence is that sometimes (I think most people know that it's less than half of the time) the partners have different intentions. I just think the sentence reads better, is less stilted sounding, without saying that the partners usually have the same intention. Badmintonhist (talk) 19:12, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Globalize or separate article

Hi WikiforPH, when adding content to this article that specifically refers to one country (the US), it is best to be explicit about that. Because this article is about unintended pregnancy, it is expected that it represents a worldwide view of the subject. I made that clearer in a subsequent edit. Given that many of these sections are only about the US (everything in "Factors associated with unintended pregnancy" only pertains here), I'm wondering if it would be best to rehome this content into a new article Unintended pregnancy in the United States (while the title technically already exists, it is a redirect to this article). The other option would be to globalize this content and make sure it represents more than just the statistics of one country, which would be much more work. Elysia (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:16, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Research Process and Methodology - SU22 - Sect 202 - Tue

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 July 2022 and 16 August 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Cindyhong123 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Sqlo123 (talk) 20:46, 4 August 2022 (UTC)