This archive report was first published on 10 December 2019.
According to a study published on November 25, 2019, in the journal Plos, nearly a quarter of women seeking abortion services in Nairobi were married or living with a partner.
The study, conducted by Marie Stopes Kenya in collaboration with the University of California, involved 353 women and found that the main reasons for induced abortions were socio-economic stress and lack of support from partners.
Interestingly, the study revealed that the only reason pharmacy attendants would deny clients abortion services was not due to health concerns, but rather the client's inability to pay.
The study also found that the highest number of aborting women were single, aged between 20 and 24 years, and were likely to be terminating their first pregnancy.
These findings are particularly concerning given that almost half of pregnancies among married women in Kenya are not planned, as indicated by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics.
