4.3.1 Household income and medical abortion
As the costs of childbearing and parenting increase, households with low
incomes struggle to support women to continue their pregnancies. By
exploring mechanisms influencing the socioeconomic conditions leading to
abortion, it was found that in Russia an increase of $1,000 in per
capita gross regional product (GRP) led to a reduction in the abortion
rate of 0.075[18]. Socioeconomic status is a closely associated with
employment status, which is an important factor leading medical abortion
demonstrated by Klutsey EE, et al[19].
Based on the data that economic conditions were procyclically associated
with abortion rates from approximately 2004 to 2010, with abortion rates
declining by approximately 5 per cent for every percentage point
increase in the unemployment rate during that period, it can be argued
that economic conditions may be an important factor influencing women’s
reproductive choices in the United States[20]. On the contrary, in
Ghana, the risk of abortion is considerably higher among wealthy
women[21, 22].
It should be noted, however, that the associations observed in these
conventional epidemiological studies suffered from the limitations of
modest sample sizes, reverse causality, and the inability to fully
alleviate confounding effects. Using MR method, our study reliably
concluded that HI was negatively associated with the risk of medical
abortion.