Influence of Intimate Partners ’ Violence on Unintended Pregnancy in Bangladesh

Abstract Violence and unintended pregnancy are increasingly becoming essential public health issue in Bangladesh. The study aimed to examine the influence of vio lence on unintended pregnancy taking selected covariate into consideration. This study used nationally representative sample of the Bangladesh Health and Demographic Survey 2007 where data were obtained from 10,996 ever married women aged 10–49 years. Of them 4,925 women having their last birth in the last five years were selected for this study to analyze the violence vict imization data. Ch i-square and logistic regression analysis was done at 95 % confidence interval. The mean age of the women was 25.9 ± 6.3 years. About 29.6 percent of the ever married women had suffered either physical or sexual vio lence from their partner at least once. Unintended pregnancy was 31.6 percent among the respondent women. Women exposed to at least one form of violence at least once, had 34.5 percent higher odds (OR=1.35; CI=1.08 to 1.67) of having an unintended pregnancy. Intimate partner violence positively influenced unintended pregnancy. Unintended pregnancies due to intimate partner violence puts more burden on the existing population problem in Bangladesh. Hence, it is necessary to control intimate partner v iolence through favourable policy level decisions and strong social movements in order to address the problem