Impact of Abortion to Philippine Fertility: A Health and Demographic Perspective

Abstract

The Philippines’ total fertility rate has been analysed using Bongaarts’ model of proximate determinants using the National Demographic and Health Surveys over the years since the said data had been available. There had been substantial tracing of societal development supplemented by this. It had demonstrated the relative contribution of most of the components namely marriage, contraception, postpartum infecundability. The abortion component of the model had been overlooked due to the assumption that it was estimated at the value of ‘1’ referring to the total absence of abortion in the country since it is illegal. With this said, there had been a noticeable continuous increase in disparity of the estimated TFR based on the model and the observed TFR. It is exemplified by the figures from 1993, 1998, 2003, and 2008contention in this paper is that because of the growing prevalence of abortion in the Philippines, this disparity may be decreased if abortion is given an estimate more fit. Results from preliminary estimates based on independent surveys show that it indeed becomes smaller and maintains this in a stable manner. Together with this, decomposition is done to reassess the relative contribution of each index to the percent change in TFR over the years. Outcomes show it retained the levelling of previous decomposition values but now has accommodated a meaningful segment to abortion. What this entails is that there may be a need for estimations based on various sources to have a more comprehensive view of fertility in the country.