Contraceptive use. A comparison between ever- and never-pregnant adolescents.

There is controversy about how the experience of a teenage pregnancy affects the contraceptive behavior of adolescent women. Data from 425 sexually active, unmarried teenage women who had access to contraception were used to address this issue. Chi-square tests suggest that ever-pregnant teens are significantly less likely to have used contraception at last intercourse than never-pregnant teens. This finding persists when comparing never-pregnant teens to subgroups of ever-pregnant adolescents whose contraceptive behavior was expected to have been affected positively by their pregnancy. Logistic regression results show a significant pregnancy-history effect after controlling for other important predictors of teenage contraceptive behavior. Additional analysis suggests that the negative effect of pregnancy history may occur because ever-pregnant teens hold more positive attitudes about pregnancy than their never-pregnant peers.