WHO: Position paper on mainstreaming adolescent pregnancy in efforts to make pregnancy safer > Recent data confirm that a wide variation in planning status

WHO: Position paper on mainstreaming adolescent pregnancy in efforts to make pregnancy safer > Recent data confirm that a wide variation in planning status exists across developing countries. Results from 37 recent DHS surveys show a median of about 75% of pregnancies to adolescents are planned (the data are not disaggregated by marital status). However, the percentage of pregnancies to adolescents that are planned varies widely, from a low of 42% in Colombia to a high of 93% in Egypt (Figure 23). Important regional variation also occurs (Figure 24), with a median of only about half of pregnancies planned in Latin America and the Caribbean versus 69% in sub-Saharan Africa, and between 80% and 90% in North Africa/West Asia/Europe and South and Southeast Asia. > No clear pattern emerges when comparing planning status of pregnancy in adolescents versus older women. In about half of countries of 37 countries with a recent DHS, adolescents under 20 have higher rates of planned pregnancies compared with women 20-24 years old (Figure 25). > Data from recent studies bolster findings from previous reviews that adolescents in developed countries have relatively high rates of unplanned pregnancies compared to their counterparts in developing countries. In the U.S. a 2002 national survey found that only 21.6% of births to women under 20 years older were planned, compared to 55.8% of births to women ages 20-24 (Chandra et al. 2005).