A qualitative phenomenological study on consequences of having abortion out of formal healthcare settings: lived experiences of young women who survived induced unsafe abortions in rural areas in Rwanda
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Despite substantial effort and legal reforms to improve reproductive health services, unsafe abortion remains a significant public health concern in Rwanda and contributing to maternal morbidity and mortality especially among young women. Objective This study aimed at exploring the consequences of unsafe abortions among young women in rural Rwanda. Methods A descriptive phenomenological study was conducted in the Northern Province of Rwanda to explore the consequences of self-induced abortion among young women in rural areas. In-depth interviews were conducted with ten young women, and Colaizzi’s method was used to identify emergent themes. Results Three themes emerged from the data: (1) Physical and psychological consequences, (2) Socio-economic consequences, and (3) Legal repercussions. Some participants reported severe signs and symptoms, including heavy bleeding and severe pain. Among the psychological problems reported included feelings of shame, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and suicidal ideation. Participants also reported that they experienced stigma, discrimination, and financial burden as consequences of having abortions out of formal healthcare settings. Legal consequences, such as being taken to court or being jailed due to unsafe abortion, were also reported. Conclusion The findings in this study suggest that unsafe abortions among young women have several consequences, with significant impacts on their physical psychological health, and socioeconomical well-being. To mitigate these consequences, the Ministry of Health and stakeholders should join efforts to prioritize comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education, improve access to safe and legal abortion services, and actively advocate and work to eliminate stigma and decriminalization associated with seeking or having abortion.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".