ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors focus on a research which was carried out by the Rural Women’s Social Education Centre (RUWSEC). Based in the Kanchipuram district of Tamil Nadu, RUWSEC is a grassroots women’s organisation that has been working on women’s reproductive health and rights issues since 1981. The objective of the study was to explore the factors and processes that underlie an induced abortion, with the ultimate goal of designing community-based interventions to prevent unwanted pregnancy, based on the in-depth understanding of the processes leading to married women’s choice of abortions to space birth. In rural areas in Tamil Nadu, the majority of marriages are arranged by families, usually with the consent of prospective bride and groom. The vast majority of women stated that they did not talk about sex with their husbands, or express their sexual desire in other ways. In two-thirds of the 52 abortions, the decision to terminate pregnancy had been taken by the women concerned.
