Maternal adverse childhood experiences and pregnancy intentions

Purpose: The current study investigates the association between maternal adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and having an unwanted (i.e., a pregnancy that was undesired) or mistimed pregnancy (i.e., a pregnancy that occurred sooner than wanted). Methods: Data are from the 2018 North Dakota and South Dakota Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) ( N = 1897). Multinomial logistic regression analyses are used to assess the association between levels of ACE exposure and having an unwanted or mistimed pregnancy relative to an intended pregnancy. Results: Findings demonstrated that women with three ACEs (Relative Risk Ratio [RRR] = 2.157, 95% con-fidence interval [CI], 1.121-4.151) and four or more ACEs (RRR = 1.836, 95% CI, 1.181-2.854) had approx-imately twice the relative risk of having an unwanted pregnancy (vs. an intended pregnancy) compared to women with 0 ACEs. There was no association between ACEs and reporting a mistimed pregnancy. Conclusions: These findings add to a burgeoning literature detailing how accumulating ACEs can create challenges for family planning by increasing the likelihood of having an unintended pregnancy. Study re-sults suggest the need to devote greater resources to the prevention of ACEs and unintended pregnancies. (c) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

The study found an association between maternal adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and unwanted pregnancies, but no association with mistimed pregnancies. It suggests the importance of allocating more resources to prevent adverse childhood experiences and unintended pregnancies.