[Induced abortion in Greenland]

The purpose of the study was to seek knowledge about the reasons for the very high rate of legal abortions in Greenland. In four municipalities in the Disko Bay region of West Greenland all pregnant women were asked to fill in a questionnaire. Due to organisational problems only 39% of the women were asked to participate and a total of 82 women seeking abortion and 175 women who wished to continue the pregnancy were enrolled in the study. A few Danish women (22) were subsequently removed from the study base. The women who wanted an abortion were more often than the other women single, their knowledge of Danish as a second language was poorer, and they less often had a job. Although the age distributions of the two groups were similar the women who wanted an abortion had more often been pregnant before (more births and more abortions). The women who wanted an abortion more often than the other women reported having been drunk, having had a pelvic inflammation or VD, and having been admitted to hospital. Half of the women who wanted an abortion reported that they had forgotten to use their contraception and one fourth were opposed to the use of contraception. There seems not to be a well defined high risk group for legal abortion but a general need for a more realistic view on contraception.