Women, Husbands, and In-Laws: Abortion Decision-Making in Madhya Pradesh, India

Kerry MacQuarrie, International Center for Research on Women (ICRW)
Jeffrey Edmeades, International Center for Research on Women (ICRW)
Christine MacAulay, International Center for Research on Women (ICRW)
Laura Nyblade, International Center for Research on Women (ICRW)
Anju Malhotra, International Center for Research on Women (ICRW)

In this paper, we examine women’s decision-making capacity and the role of husbands and in-laws in shaping abortion behavior in Madhya Pradesh, India. Data come from a survey covering life course experience with pregnancies and abortion of 2,448 married women (15-39). Descriptive results show that 18% of all pregnancies were unwanted/mistimed, of which abortion was attempted for 42%. Pregnancies were more frequently unwanted by women than their husbands. Women faced considerable pressure to bear children (40%) or sons (30%) and had limited decision-making. Restricting our analysis to 1608 pregnancies unwanted by women or their husbands, we use step-wise logistic regressions to first model women’s own desires, autonomy (including restrictions on mobility, spending, incidence of domestic violence, and spousal age difference), and control variables. The second model includes the husband’s preferences, and the third those of in-laws to establish changes in the statistical effect of women’s preferences on abortion behavior.