Abstract

Background: Ethiopia passed an abortion law in 2005, with the goal of reducing the number of unsafe abortions. Since then, the availability of safe abortion services has improved. On the other hand, increased access to services hasn't resulted in a significant reduction in unsafe abortions. The aim of this study is to examine women's knowledge on the availability of safe abortion care services at public facilities in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Methods: A cross-sectional research of 432 women of reproductive age who work in non-health related public organizations was undertaken from April 1 to June 30, 2019. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire, and the data was cleaned in Epi-data before being exported to SPSS version 24.0 for analysis. Descriptive and inferential statics such as Bivariate analysis using correlation coefficients, student t-test, A one-way analysis of variance and linear regressions used to examine the association between independent and dependent variables using 95% confidence interval (CI) and p-values below 0.05 considered as statistically significant.

Findings: This study included a total of 432 women. A majority (65.5%) of study participants heard of abortion care in which media was the major source of information for 343 (79.5%). Women’s knowledge of abortion care service provision analyzed by independent-samples t-test showed place of grew up, history of miscarriage and previous information of abortion were predictors. A one-way between-groups analysis of variance was conducted to explore the impact of marital status on levels of knowledge about abortion care and showed statistically significant difference. Multiple linear regression models revealed that number of delivery, place of grew up, previous information on abortion and women encountered miscarriage on abortion were making a significant unique contribution to the prediction of the knowledge level.

Conclusions: This study identified women’s knowledge about accessibility of safe abortion care services and number of delivery, marital status, place of grew up, previous information on abortion and women who encountered miscarriage were predictors of knowledge about accessibility of safe abortion services that future scholars would attest.

Keywords: Women; Safe Abortion; Accessibility; Ethiopia

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