Intentional Abortion and Its Associated Factors Among Female Sex Workers in Iran: Results From National Bio-Behavioral Surveillance-2020 Publisher Pubmed



Moradi G¹ ; Gouya MM² ; Amini EE¹ ; Ghorbani SS³ ; Akbarpour S⁴ ; Zareie B⁵ ; Izadi N³ ; Kashefi F⁶ ; Moradi Y¹
Source: PLoS ONE Published:2022

Abstract

Purpose In addition to estimating the prevalence of intentional abortion in Iranian female sex workers (FSWs), this study identified related factors using the data of a national study. Methods This cross-sectional study utilizes the third round of integrated bio-behavioral surveillance-III data in Iranian FSWs in December 2019 and August 2020, and 1515 Participants were selected in 8 geographically diverse cities in Iran. Logistic regression was performed using unweighted analysis to identify factors associated with intentional abortion. Stata software (version 14), respondent-driven sampling analyses, and R (version 4.1.2) was used for data analysis. Results From 1390 participants with valid responses to the abortion question, 598 (37.3%; 95% CI: 32.43, 42.11%) reported intentional abortion during their life. According to the age groups, the highest prevalence of abortion was in the age group of 31 to 40 years (42.60%). In the multivariate logistic regression model, the marital status (divorced women (AOR = 2.05, 95% CI: 1.29, 3.27), concubines (AOR = 1.78, 95% CI: 1.02, 3.11)), work experience in brothels (AOR = 1.39, 95% CI: 1.04, 1.84), the type of sex (AOR = 2.75, 95% CI: 1.35, 5.58), the history of sexual violence (AOR = 1.54, 95% CI: 1.19, 2.01), and alcohol consumption (AOR = 1.53, 95% CI: 1.18, 2.01) were significantly associated with a history of intentional abortion. Conclusion Intentional abortion’s prevalence among Iranian FSWs has been much higher than that of the general female population in Iran, which is an alarming issue in the public health of this group and needs more effective interventions. In addition, alcohol consumption, working in a brothel, and being divorced are essential factors in increasing abortions among sex workers. © 2022 Moradi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.