Identification of women at risk for unwanted pregnancy

Concern about increasing rates of unwanted pregnancy, particularly among adolescents, has led to consideration of steps necessary to develop effective intervention programs. In order to reach a young woman for counseling and contraceptive assistance before she places herself at risk for unintended pregnancy, it seems necessary to develop the capability for identifying high-risk individuals without reference to sexual history. The authors describe a preliminary attempt to predict contraceptively unprotected coitus from responses to projective test stimuli, noting that the problem is so urgent that even early and necessarily incomplete work in this area may have merit in stimulating further research in identification of women at risk for unwanted pregnancy.