[Abortion among female students and employees of a Brazilian university]

In Brazil, the subject of induced abortion is controversial and considered by some to be a serious public health problem. On the other hand there are little data available as to its frequency and general characteristics. The difficulty encountered in obtaining reliable information is to be explained by the illegality of abortion that inhibits women from talking about their experience, and most studies are carried out in hospitals and thus succeed in identifying only those women who have complications. A study was carried out in 1990, involving all the female graduate students and employees of a Brazilian university. Data was obtained through a questionnaire that was returned by mail, anonymously. This paper presents some of the results relating to the frequency of miscarriage and abortion in this population. Significantly more students than employees were less than 25 years old (85% and 13.7% respectively); fewer students were married or in a common-law union (11% of students as against 56% of employees) and four times fewer students than employees had never been pregnant (15% and 65%). Nine percent of the students and 14% of the employees had had at least one abortion. When only sometime pregnant women were taken into consideration, over half the students (59%) and 20% of the employees had had an abortion. Differences between the two groups were maintained when considered by age, both for miscarriage and abortion. Students of less than 25 years of age presented the highest percentage of abortion.