Sexual Exposure and Awareness of Emergency Contraceptive Pills among Never Married Adolescent Girls in India

In India pre-marital sex although is taboo, interplay of multitude of factors exposes adolescent girls to pre-marital sex leading to unwanted pregnancy and further intricacies. Awareness of emergency contraceptive pills (ECP) can shield girls against such predicaments and associated social stigmas. Hence, this paper assesses the sexual exposure and awareness of ECP among the never married adolescent girls in India by taking the National Family Health Survey 2005-06 (NFHS-3) data. Out of the total sample, 15,320 adolescent girls of the age group 15-19 years, who are never married and de jure residents are retained for this study. Levels are found out through percentage distribution; associations are assessed through cross tabulation and logistic regression is applied to find out the determinants. It is found that in India, about 0.6 percent of never married adolescent girls have already experienced sex, out of whom 22.4 percent were active during four weeks prior to the survey. Multi-variate result shows that with the increase in age, probability of having pre-marital sex also increases, whereas with the improvement in household wealth index, probability goes down. Overall merely 4.9 percent of adolescent girls are aware of ECP. Age, education, religion and exposure to sexual intercourse exert significant effect on the awareness of ECP. Older, better educated, richer and sexually experienced girls are more likely to be aware of ECP, whereas rural and Muslim girls are less likely to be aware of ECP.