WORLD JOURNAL OF ADVANCE
HEALTHCARE RESEARCH

Udobi S. I.*, Udobi J. I., Onuh A. C. and Ezebialu I. U.

ABSTRACT

Background: Pregnancy loss prior to viability, initially simply referred to as ‘abortion’, was later interchangeably referred to as abortion or miscarriage and finally distinguished into ‘abortion’ referring to intentional loses and ‘miscarriage’ referring to spontaneous occurrences. The distinction had some psychological and emotional implications, including abortion stigma. Infertility in a woman who has experienced abortion can lead to additional psychological stress. Such women may prefer the use of the two terms interchangeably as a way of avoiding abortion disclosure and the attendant stigma. Objective: To document the responses of women with infertility to history of abortion and miscarriage and determine whether they use the terms distinctly or interchangeably. Methodology: This is a prospective study involving 159 women with 20 infertility. History of previous abortion and previous miscarriage were obtained with other interspacing questions. Data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences, version 21. Frequency, measures of central tendencies and dispersion as well as McNemar test, T-test and Chi-square test were obtained. ? ? 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Age range was 21- 49 years and mean 33.5 ± 5.1 years. There were 134 and 132 subjects with positive history of miscarriage and abortion respectively. McNemar test and T-test showed no significant difference between the two variables and no difference in their means (? = 0.754 and ? = 0.477 respectively). Conclusion: The responses to abortion and miscarriage were similar and showed no significant differences. These findings are in keeping with interchangeable use of the two terms.

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