Induced abortion as one of the main demographic and maternal health risk factors, has drawn attentions of many researchers and scholars in demography and related fields. Despite of its crucial role in population and health dynamics, accompanying social, cultural, religious and many other types of sensitivities, makes it inevitable to employ indirect methods to study the prevalence and different aspects of the subject matter. This study, making use of the Proximate Determinants of Fertility model, introduced first by Bongaarts and Potter in 1983, is aimed at estimating induced abortion rates for urban and rural areas of different provinces in the country. Furthermore, fertility inhibiting effects of Induced abortion besides of some other proximate determinants such as; contraception, marriage, and postpartum infecundity on fertility are estimated.
The study makes use of the Iranian Demographic and Health Survey (IDHS) data, gathered in 2000 by the Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education by the technical and financial supports of some other national and international organizations.
Estimates indicate that an average Iranian woman during her fertile life, assuming the employed natural fertility and the relative stability of survey-time age specific abortion rates, experiences 1.071 induced abortions (1.108 in urban and 1.012 in rural areas). Estimated induced abortion rates are highest in Isfahan province (1.7) and lowest in West Azerbaijan and Ardabil Provinces (close to 0). Gen (1rally speaking, provinces with higher socioeconomic status, urban areas, and provinces having higher proportions of literate women, are more likely to have higher rates of induced abortion. It seems, Induced Abortion, beside of other proximate determinants, played its role in rapid fertility decline in the country in recent years. Contraception was the main fertility inhibiting factor, preventing 59.3 percent of controlled fertility, and marriage (with 21.2 percent), induced abortion (with 15.8 percent), and postpartum infecundity (with only 3.8 percent) hold the next places, respectively. Looking for possible relationships between estimated rates and some other well-known induced abortion correlates according to the literature, estimations are validated and further discussed.