The Consequences of the Tajikistani Civil War for Abortion and Miscarriage
- PDF / 920,042 Bytes
- 24 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 39 Downloads / 151 Views
The Consequences of the Tajikistani Civil War for Abortion and Miscarriage Michelle L. O’Brien1 Received: 15 December 2019 / Accepted: 18 October 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Although a great deal of attention is paid to reproductive health during violent conflicts, the literature is sparse on the consequences of conflict for abortion and miscarriage. This research provides an analysis of a recent historical case: the 1992–1997 civil war in Tajikistan, using the female questionnaire of the 2007 Tajik Living Standards Survey to examine a subsample of 1445 women surveyed who had reached menarche during or after the war and had been pregnant at least once by the time of the survey. The analysis leverages the uneven geographical scope of conflict events during the civil war to pinpoint women’s exposure to violence, measured by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. The results show that for women who had reached menarche during or after the civil war, exposure to conflict events increases the likelihood of ever experiencing miscarriage, but not abortion. Including a spatial lag operator reveals that there were also spillover effects for abortion, in which women who were in a broader region of uncertainty were more likely to induce an abortion. These findings highlight the role of institutional changes in affecting pregnancy loss during and after civil war. Keywords Civil war · Reproductive health · Abortion · Miscarriage
Introduction While a large body of demographic literature has addressed short- and long-term fertility responses to political crises and conflict (Agadjanian et al. 2008; Agadjanian and Prata 2002; Blanc 2004; Caldwell 2004; Islam et al. 2016; Kraehnert et al. 2019; Lindskog 2016; Urdal and Che 2013), the same cannot be said for Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1111 3-020-09624-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Michelle L. O’Brien [email protected] 1
Social Science Division, New York University, Abu Dhabi, UAE
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
M. L. O’Brien
assessing the longer-term consequences of conflict on pregnancy loss.1 A great deal of research has examined the role of violence and conflict in negative pregnancy outcomes, such as low birth weight (Badshah et al. 2008; Brown 2018; Camacho 2008; Koppensteiner and Manacorda 2016; Lauderdale 2006; Torche and Shwed 2015; Torche and Villarreal 2014) and miscarriage (Garcı́a-Enguı́danos et al. 2002; Keasley et al. 2017; Nakamura et al. 2008). Few studies, however, incorporate abortion, with much of the existing research on consequences for abortion focused on the most pressing and urgent needs for contraceptive and safe abortion access among vulnerable conflict-affected populations, such as refugees in camps (Black et al. 2014; Chi et al. 2015; McGinn 2000). Yet, during and shortly after war, the experience of violent conflict affects pregnancy loss, including abortion,2 through individual and institutional changes. This article examin
Data Loading...
