Less-privileged women more prone to accidental pregnancies, study shows why

A recent study has shown that women from disadvantaged backgrounds have higher chances of having unintended pregnancies.

This, the study says, is as a result of their inability to use reliable forms of contraception as opposed to women from well-to-do backgrounds.

Carried out at the University of Michigan, the researchers observed 1,003 women between 18 and 19 years old.

Within the space of 2 and a half years, researchers investigated dynamic processes in behaviours during early adulthood and attempted to understand the persisting racial differences in rates of unintended pregnancies in the United States.

The result showed that black women were more likely to use less effective methods for pregnancy prevention like condoms than white women, who tended to use more effective methods like oral contraceptives.

Also, “black women did not differ from white women in their number of discontinuations or different methods used and had fewer contraceptive method switches”, the study revealed.

The study, which examined black and white women experiences with sex and pregnancy, also showed that black women spent less time in relationships and had sex less frequently in their relationships than white women.

In their experiences with sex and pregnancy, both black and white women do not differ in the number of relationships they formed and there seem to be no difference in their consistency of contraceptive use within relationships.