| Summary: | This thesis sought to work towards a better understanding of eenagers who have more than one pregnancy within the UK, where there is currently very little literature. To achieve this, there were three distinct strands of research: firstly, a scoping review to identify evidence on the characteristics of young women who have more than one pregnancy and their individual experiences; secondly, a data linkage study bringing together birth registration records with abortion notification records to identify the proportion of teenagers who have more than one pregnancy in England and Wales and the patterns of these according to pregnancy outcome (birth or abortion); and finally, an Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis study to explore young women’s experiences of becoming pregnant following an abortion. The findings revealed that aside from not using long-acting reversible contraception (LARC), there appeared to be few features that characterise a subgroup of young women who are more likely to have more than one pregnancy. As such, perhaps al previously pregnant teenagers should be treated as ‘high risk’ for further pregnancies. Moreover, it was not possible through the data linkage study to more accurately identify the proportion of subsequent teenage pregnancies in England and Wales. This was primarily due to the lack of a unique personal identifier on both datasets. This thesis therefore advocates a change in routine data collection to include NHS number on all abortion notification forms to maximise the use of these data. The qualitative findings highlighted that, while there were some collective narratives, each young woman’s story also had its own unique features. They were faced with a range of choices as they tried to manage their fertile lives following an abortion. However, these choices were situated within broader social contexts and sometimes they had little to tangibly choose from. Pregnancy was often a reassessment point where the young women looked at where their lives were heading, their relationships, and their sexual behaviour, and made changes - but in the unpredictable and changing world of adolescence, these were often not maintained.
|
|---|
