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Unintended pregnancy is a world wide problem that affects women, their families, and society. From a total of 175 million pregnancies per year 75 million of them are unintended. This cross-sectional study was undertaken to determine prevalence of unintended pregnancies and pertinent factors and suggests an appropriate solution. A sample of 400 women who were seeking pregnancy tests in laboratories of hospitals affiliated of Tehran University of Medical Sciences, at the obstetric and gynecologic ward, and who had positive tests were selected by the Poisson random sampling method. Women who were found to have diseases such as hydatidiform mole were excluded. A questionnaire was used to collect data. Pregnancy intention was measured using NSFG 2001 questionnaire. Descriptive and analytic tests (chi-square, Fisher exact, t-test) were used to analyze the data. Prevalence of unintended pregnancy was 47.5%, of whom 36.3% hadn’t used contraception methods. Fear of side effects (66.7%) was the most prevalent reason of not using contraception. The main reason for unintended pregnancy was economical problems (42.6%). 63.7% of women with unintended pregnancy had used one of contraceptive method but 86.8% of users had used that method in an incorrect way. Also the results indicated that the age of women, educational status, number of children, husband’s age and education were associated with contraceptive use. The results indicated that prevalence of unintended pregnancy is high and the contraceptive methods weren't used or were used incorrectly by most of them (91.6%). This may show the necessity of training women about contraceptive methods and side effects of unintended pregnancy. Due to the important role of health care providers they should be trained to give such consultation to women.

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Background & Aim: Some women, throughout their life cycle, experience unintended pregnancy and had to decide on continuing or terminating it. Although the decision-making process always recurs, few studies have so far shed light on this complex, and context-based process. The aim of the present study was to explore Iranian women’s decision-making process to abort or continue an unintended pregnancy.
Methods & Materials: This was a qualitative study using grounded theory approach. Data were collected through unstructured, in-depth interviews with 29 participants in Tabriz from March 2016 to May 2017. The participants were selected through the purposeful sampling method and data collection were continued until reaching data saturation. Data analysis was carried out concurrently with the data collection, using the MAXQDA software version 10.
Results: Data analysis gave rise to four axial categories: “perceived threats”, “resistance mixed with indecision”, “values and supportive resources”, as well as “acceptance and confirmation of decision”. This means that the decision-making process among women with unintended pregnancy initially starts with a perceived threat as a main concern leading to their resistance towards accepting such a pregnancy, then exposure to threats arising from abortion can cause indecision and uncertainty in practicing abortion. In this respect, given the social support, women affected by religious values make efforts to choose the procedure with the least harm and threats and maximum acceptability and confirmability. “Confirmation of decision” is as well the outcome of the interactive process of decision-making.
Conclusion: What can differentiate the theory of decision-making on abortion or continuation of an unintended pregnancy from the general theories of decision-making is its sociocultural confirmability. Social acceptance of abortion and childbearing in line with moral evaluation of fetal development directs the confirmability process of decision-making about unintended pregnancy.