Induced abortion in Italy: A comparison among immigrants and women living in their country of origin

In the last years (1996-2006) in Italy induced abortion levels stopped the decreasing trend observed in the period 1980-1995. The induced abortion rate was 15.3 per 1,000 women aged 15-49 years in 1980, reduced to 9.3 in 1995 and nowadays it is equal to 8.9. Italian data show that higher levels are referred to young women (14.44 for women aged 20-24). Moreover, considering young and never married women, the induced abortion rate for foreign women is four times higher than among Italians (45.5 vs. 11.1 per 1,000 women aged 18-24 years, 39 vs. 10.3 per 1,000 women aged 25-29 years).
A first aim of this paper is to study the induced abortion rates by age and other socio-demographic characteristics in an international context, trying to explain the differences among countries. Among women aged 15-44 years, abortion levels in Italy are quite low: 11.1 per 1,000 women, while in Romania the rate is equal to 31.3. Italian rate is also significantly lower than USA (19.4), Canada (14.6) and other EU countries like Sweden, England and Wales and France. Are these differences due to national laws, to differences in the age structure of female population, to differences in the reproductive age or to a different recourse to induced abortion?
A second aim is to compare levels of induced abortion of foreign women resident in Italy with levels referred to women living in their country of origin, trying to understand if and why women resident in Italy change their behavior when moving. For instance the induced abortion rate for Romanian women aged 20-49 years resident in Italy is equal to 67.2 while it is almost half for women living in Romania (35.8). This gap exists in each age class and for the age 20-24 the difference is three times higher (155.4 vs. 51.8)