Abortion: Life-Course Stages and Disruptive Life Events

Abstract Pregnancy termination and its interplay with critical life stages and events has rarely been subjected to careful scrutiny in the social sciences, mainly due to a lack of high-quality survey data. Using the first eleven waves (2008–2018) of the German Family Panel Study (pairfam) and employing linear probability models, we examine women and also men with partners who either had induced abortion (N=260 women; N=170 men) or became parents (N=1478 women; N=1220 men). We frame abortion as a social process in which life circumstances and disruptive life events fundamentally shape the decision to carry a pregnancy to term or to discontinue it. We find that teenage or late pregnancy, educational enrollment, previous children, partnership dissolution, and economic uncertainty are associated with induced abortion. Our evidence suggests that abortion decisions are powerfully shaped by life-course contingencies and their complex intertwining.