ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author focuses on a study to estimate the extent and components of pregnancy wastage including abortion, which is an important reproductive health as well as rights issue, amongst two poor occupational groups, that is, agricultural labourers and beedi workers in the Udipi district, a relatively advanced region in coastal Karnataka. To start with, a quantitative method was used to list all the households in the village, where information on the occupation status of all workers in the households was collected, to enable the authors to later identify the beedi and agricultural-labour households. There are three different types of pregnancy wastage, viz., induced abortions, spontaneous abortions and stillbirths. The latter two are involuntary forms of pregnancy wastage. The author examines the data on induced abortion more closely to discern the extent of its use for spacing of births or for limiting family size by various socio-economic groups in the region.
