Family Planning Accessibility and Induced Abortion in Rural China

Xingshan Cao, University of Toronto

In China, many family planning services have been introduced into the villages in the last decade. Whether this improvement reduces induced abortion deserves intensive investigation. Previous studies reported two major causes of induced abortion in China: unplanned pregnancy and sex-selective abortion, which are related to contraceptive supply and prenatal diagnosis, respectively. Using the 2001 China Family Planning and Reproductive Health Survey data, we tested the effects of contraceptive supply and ultrasound B access on induced abortion. The result of multilevel logit model showed that only township-level contraceptive supply could significantly reduce individual's likelihood of induced abortion, while village-level contraceptive supply and township-level access to ultrasound B have no impact on individual's choice of induced abortion. Service quality and cost might be the reason that township-level contraceptive supply works.