Domestic Violence, Unwanted Pregnancy and Pregnancy Termination among Urban Women of Bangladesh S. M. Mostafa Kamal; Ph.D. Department of Mathematics, Islamic University, Kushtia, Bangladesh Received October 2012; Revised and accepted December 2012

Abstract

Objective: This paper explores the relationship between domestic violence against women inflicted by husbands, unwanted pregnancy and pregnancy termination of Bangladeshi urban women. Materials and methods: The study used the nationally representative 2007 Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) data. The BDHS covered a representative sample of 10,996 ever married women from rural and urban areas. The BDHS used a separate module to collect information from women regarding domestic violence. The survey gathered information of domestic violence from 1,013 urban women which are the basis of the study. Simple cross tabulation, bivariate and multivariate statistical analyses were performed to analyzing data. Results: Overall, the lifetime prevalence of domestic violence was 47.5%. Of the most recent pregnancies, 15.6% were unwanted and 16.0% of the women terminated pregnancy in their marital life. The multivariate binary logistic regression analyses yielded quantitatively important and reliable estimate of unwanted pregnancy and pregnancy termination. The regression analyses yielded significantly (p