In August of 1969 abortion became legal in Oregon. About a year later, in October of 1970, the Planned Parenthood Association in Portland began to offer pregnancy testing and counseling as part of their services. This is a new and separate program which is designed to help women find out if they are pregnant as early as possible (at low or no fee) and provide counseling on the problems connected with unwanted pregnancy. This study is based on a sample of women seeking pregnancy counseling at Planned Parenthood in Portland in the calendar year 1971. During that year about 1,230 pregnancy tests were done through the agency: of these, 549 were positive, and 681 were negative. From the 549 positive tests a 20% random sample was drawn by utilizing the terminal digits of 2 and 6 in the six digit clinic number assigned every patient. This sample numbered 113 cases: of these, l09 records were located. The present study is based on data from these 109 records. While the ultimate concern of this study, like that of other research on contraception and abortion, is to develop knowledge useful in reducing unwanted pregnancies, the immediate purpose is to provide Planned Parenthood Association in Portland with information about the new group that it is serving. The study tries to do this by: 1) Comparing this new group with presently available statistics on the total clinic population, 2) Analyzing the attributes of this special group of clients: the pregnancy counseling group, 3) Making recommendations to the agency on forms, procedures and recording which the researcher feels will improve the service to this group, and 4) Making suggestions as to further research that would develop additional information helpful in serving these clients. The major effort in this study is to display the information derived from the sample in a way which will be useful to both the agency and to others doing research in the field of contraception and abortion.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:pdx.edu/oai:pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu:open_access_etds-1787 |
| Date | 01 June 1972 |
| Creators | Lapham, Marcia Jean |
| Publisher | PDXScholar |
| Source Sets | Portland State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Dissertations and Theses |
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