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Multilingual Demographic Dictionary, second unified edition, English volume

Life-time abortion rate

Multilingual Demographic Dictionary, second unified edition, English vol.
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Life-time abortion rate  (LIFE-TIME abortion rate)


Where induced abortion (604-2) has been legalized, it is possible to compile statistics on legal abortions (604-4). The abortion rate 1 is a measure of the frequency of abortion in a population during a given period, usually a year. Abortions may be related to the total population or to the number of women in the reproductive ages and may be specific for age, parity or any other characteristic. The abortion ratio 2 is a measure of the frequency of abortions in relation to the number of live births (601-4) during the same period. The life-time abortion rate 3 is the sum of age-specific abortion rates 4★ and is a synthetic measure of abortion per woman or per 1000 women. These rates are the ratio of the number of abortions reported at each age to years lived by all women of the same age. If women can be classified according to their marital status, abortion rates by age and marital status 5★ can be obtained. It is often also relevant to divide the number of abortions by the number of conceptions and so to calculate the probability that a pregnancy results in an abortion by age and marital status 6★. More...