Education influences womens childbearing patterns. Data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for nine Latin American countries show that women with no education have large families of 6-7 children while better educated women have only 2-3 children. However despite this wide differential in actual fertility between the two groups of women women across the education level spectrum share a small family norm. A 20-50% gap in contraceptive prevalence exists between the least educated and best educated women. Better educated women have broader knowledge higher socioeconomic status and less fatalistic attitudes toward reproduction than do less educated women. The results of a regression analysis indicate that cognitive economic and attitudinal assets mediate the influence of schooling upon reproductive behavior and partly explain the wide fertility gap between educational strata.
In light of the data obtained in the Demography and Health Survey currently under way, a new level has been calculated for the current unmet needs for family planning. This analysis allows a calculation of the potential demand for contraceptives for birth limiting or birth spacing, and includes the pregnant or amenorrheic women whose last pregnancy was unintentional. According to the new calculation, the unmet demands in 5 Latin American countries varies from 15% of married women in Brazil and Colombia, to 21% in the Dominican Republic and Ecuador, and 29% in Peru. In all these countries, the unmet need for contraceptives is greater among women who wish to limit births, compared to women desiring birth spacing, except in the Dominican Republic, where sterilization is very widespread. The greatest unmet needs are found among younger women and rural women, and it decreases significantly with educational level. To determine the level of desire for contraception during the decade before the survey, a computation was done for the 4 countries included in the Worldwide Survey of Fertility. A large decrease in the level of unmet desire for contraception was found over that time period, from 20% in Peru, to 55% in Colombia.
Data on sexual attitudes and conduct focus mainly on university populations and other student groups. A survey of sexual attitudes and conduct was administered to 128 upper middle class women, 218 lower middle class women, and 41 poor women in Peru who were mothers. The average age was 35.2, 30.8, and 28.1, and the average number of children was 2.5, 3.5, and 4.0, respectively for each group of mothers. The mean age at menarche was 12.3, 13.8, and 13.6 respectively; this difference was attributed to differences in nutrition. The mean age at 1st intercourse was 21.0, 18.9, and 17.4, and the mean age at 1st pregnancy was 23.2, 21.3, and 19.5 respectively. Thus, there is a direct relationship to socioeconomic status for these last 2 categories. Notably, 52% of the women from a low socioeconomic status became pregnant during adolescence. The respective self-reported use of contraception ranged from 100% among upper middle class women to 72% and 40% for the other groups of mothers. A majority of women in the upper middle class and lower middle class groups believe that men should not engage in premarital sex. A large majority of women in all 3 groups are opposed to legalized abortion. The % of women who believe that abortion should never be allowed under any circumstances was 42.8%, 71.9%, and 60% respectively, and an additional 57.2%, 18.8% and 32.0% respectively would only allow abortion when the mother's health is at risk. The ideal number of children was 3 in all 3 groups.
Laws and Policies Today, 76 percent of the world's people live in countries where induced abortion is legal, at least for health reasons; and 39 percent reside in nations where abortion is available upon request. The procedure is legal in nearly every developed country, and although a majority of developing countries prohibit abortion, 67 percent of the residents of the developing world live in countries where it is permitted at least for health reasons. The other 33 percent-more than one billion people, most of them living in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the more strongly fundamentalist Islamic nations-have little or no access to legal induced abortion. Although many women around the world are unable to obtain legal abortions when they need them, the current world situation differs considerably from conditions prevailing 50 years ago, when nearly every nationoutlawed abortion. The first definitive steps toward the legalization of abortion were taken in Northern Europe during the 1930s and gained momentum in the years following World War II, when the socialist nations of Eastern and Central Europe (with the exception of Albania) adopted laws permitting firsttrimester abortions either at the woman's request or on the basis of broadly interpreted social indications. Many other developed countries, including the United States, followed suit in the 1960s and 1970s. By the beginning of 1986, induced abortions could be legally obtained for health reasons in North America and in every European country except Belgium, Ireland and Malta. Although in many of these nations certain restrictions apply to the provision of abortion, especially in the second trimester, almost any woman who wants one can get a legal first-trimester abortion. Thus, the legalization of abortion in the United States can be viewed as part of a trend toward liberalization of abortion laws throughout the industrialized world. This trend, which is occurring in developing as well as developed countries, has continued up to the present, as abortion laws have been relaxed in five more countries within the past four years-Greece, Portugal, Spain, Taiwan and Turkey. During the same period, women's access to legal abortion has been significantly reduced only in Romania (in 1984). That nation's population policy also restricts the availability of modern contraceptive methods and authorizes the investigation of all women who experience miscarriages. In addition, the Irish constitution was amended in 1985 to prevent any future liberalization of its highly restrictive abortion law. Motivations for changes in abortion laws have varied widely, from considerations of public health, social justice and women's rights to concern about rapid rates of population growth. This last factor was an explicit reason for the adoption of liberal abortion laws in Japan and Tunisia. Of the few countries that have made their abortion policies stricter, most appear to have been motivated by a desire to increase fertility. For example, Romania changed its policy in 1984 for that reason; abortion is permitted only for women who have four or more children, who are over 45, who are the victims of rape or incest or who have medical reasons for seeking an abortion. (Although these restrictions were in effect prior to 1984, they were not strictly enforced.) The prospect of a dwindling work force encouraged the governments of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary to restrict abortion between 1961 and 1974, although Czechoslovakia has recently liberalized its law. On the other hand, abortion laws were relaxed in some Western European nations where there is much concern over low fertility, such as France and West Germany. The only instance since 1945 in which a liberal abortion law was completely reversed occurred for religious reasons in Iran, when the country's revolutionary Islamic government replaced a newly liberalized abortion law with one that is extremely restrictive. However, other branches of Islam are generally less opposed to abortion, and abortion laws have been relaxed in several of the more modern Islamic countries, notably Tunisia and Turkey. Although most developing countries prohibit abortion, the two largest, China and India, liberalized their laws in 1957 and 1971, respectively. In Sub-Saharan Africa, such nations as Burundi, Ghana, Rwanda, Zambia and Zimbabwe have eased some of the restrictions that they inherited from the colonial period. Only a few Latin American countries have changed the restrictive laws that were enacted in the 19th century. However, even in countries where abortion is prohibited without exception, implicit provisions of statutes or general principles of criminal law in most, if not all, cases permit abortion to save the life of a pregnant woman. Actual abortion practice sometimes deviates from the provisions of statutory law. In Belgium, for example, a network of nonprofit clinics openly performs abortions, despite the fact that the procedure is illegal. Similarly, clinics and physicians in some areas of Latin America and elsewhere who provide large numbers of abortions are tolerated by the government.
22% of the population of Peru, or 4.25 million individuals, is between the ages of 11 and 19 years. A survey was performed on a sample of 6,000 adolescents living in Lima, Cajamarca, Huarez, and Supe. Surveys were performed in a variety of locations, including school classrooms, maternity wards, schools, and work places. The questionnaire was constructed based on a format that had been tested in Nigeria; questions dealt with socioeconomic background, sex behavior, contraceptive behavior, pregnancy history, and health practices and knowledge. 60% of the adolescents were women and 40% were men. 41% had had at least 1 sexual experience; among 18-year-olds, this % rose to 55. Only 10% were in stable union. Married adolescents tended to have begun sexual relations sooner in life. Early sexual relations were more common among men than among women, and more common among non-religious adolescents than among Catholics. Fewer than 12% of the adolescents had at 1 time used contraceptives. Contraceptive use was more prevalent among adolescents from wealthier socioeconomic groups, and more prevalent in Lima than in other regions surveyed. Of adolescents using contraceptives, 38% used condoms, 24% used oral contraceptives, and 15% used rhythm methods. Most adolescents who did not use contraceptives failed to do so because of lack of knowledge. Almost 1/4 of the young women had had a pregnancy. 18.5 of these had abortions, usually in a hospital. The importance of supporting educational prevention programs is underlined.
