• Journal of Families and Better Life
• /
• v.30 no.3
• /
• pp.1-11
• /
• 2012

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of attitudes toward reasons for which abortion is permitted on needs for abortion prevention policies among 232 unmarried female students at the middle schools, high schools, and universities located in Seoul. The respondents were requested to complete the self-administered questionnaire, and the principal component analysis, t-tests, Pearson's correlations, and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were performed for analyzing data. The major findings of this study were as follows: First, the principal component analysis identified three reasons for which abortion is permitted. These are reasons under the maternal & child health law, socioeconomic reasons, and normatively unqualified reasons. Second, the female students showed permissive attitudes toward reasons for abortion under the maternal & child health law, disapproval attitudes toward socioeconomic reasons for abortion, and neutral attitudes toward abortion by normatively unqualified reasons. Students also showed high levels of needs for abortion prevention policies. Finally, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that female students' attitudes toward reasons for which abortion is permitted significantly predicted levels of needs for abortion prevention policies, after controlling their sciodemographic characteristics. The implications of the study results are discussed.