Overestimation of abortion in Colombia and other Latin American countries Sobrestimación del aborto inducido en Colombia y otros países latinoamericanos

Abstract

Recently, the Guttmacher Institute estimated a number of 400,400 clandestine abortions for Colombia. Because of the strong implications that such brief could have in different areas of interest, a full revision of the methodology of estimation was performed. The methodology used by the Guttmacher Institute was as follows: first, the authors estimated the losses from spontaneous and induced abortions from the opinion of 289 subjects who work in an equal number of Colombian health institutions through the opinion survey entitled "Health Facilities Survey". Subsequently, an expansive multiplier (x3, x4, x5, etc.) was applied to the numbers obtained by this survey that also emerges from a subjective opinion of another 102 respondents of the "Health Professional Survey" selected by convenience. There is no objective data based on real vital events, the whole estimate is based on imagining/ numbers underlying mere opinions. Even as public opinion survey, the sampling technique introduced ser