Am J Psychiatry 1975; 132:1027-1031
Copyright © 1975 by American Psychiatric Association
Identification of women at risk for unwanted pregnancy
V Abernethy, D Robbins, GL Abernethy, H Grunebaum and JL Weiss
Concern about increasing rates of unwanted pregnancy, particularly among
adolescents, has led to consideration of steps necessary to develop
effective intervention programs. In order to reach a young woman for
counseling and contraceptive assistance before she places herself at risk
for unintended pregnancy, it seems necessary to develop the capability for
identifying high-risk individuals without reference to sexual history. The
authors describe a preliminary attempt to predict contraceptively
unprotected coitus from responses to projective test stimuli, noting that
the problem is so urgent that even early and necessarily incomplete work in
this area may have merit in stimulating further research in identification
of women at risk for unwanted pregnancy.
