Termination of pregnancy at women’s request in
Portugal – data from the national registry
2008–2011
Vicente, L; Henriques, A; Almeida, T; Freire, A;
Nogueira, P; Ramos, M
Directorate General of Health, Portugal
Termination of pregnancy (TOP) at women’s request was legalised
in Portugal up to 10 weeks of gestation, in June, 2007. All public
and private services that deliver TOP care are recorded in a
national web-based database. It is a record of episodes of TOP
and not a register of users, in which anonymity and
confidentiality is guaranteed, to be used for statistical purposes of
public health. Induced TOP at a woman’s request represent 97%
of all legal induced TOPs. Sociodemographic charactristics of the
users, distribuition by time of the procedure and contraception
after TOP, will be presented and analysed. In Portugal more than
65% of terminations are performed within the National Health
Service (NHS), where medical TOP is mainly used (96%). Annual
variation of the induced TOP at women’s request: the largest
annual growth occurred between the years 2008 and 2009 – with
an increase of 6.7%. Between 2009 and 2010, the variation was
1.8% and 1.2% between 2010 and 2011.