In a report published in the May 2012 issue of the journal Ginecología y Obstetricia de México, Elard Koch, of Chile’s Catholic University of the Most Holy Conception, et al. criticized an approach developed by the Guttmacher Institute to estimate the number and rate of induced abortions and complications from unsafe abortions in countries where the procedure is highly legally restricted. Their critique focuses largely on a Guttmacher estimate of abortion and abortion complications in Colombia. Koch et al. also offer an alternative methodology for estimating abortion in Colombia and other countries.

As documented below and detailed in our full rebuttal, the Koch et al. critique is characterized by pervasive distortions of Guttmacher’s methodology, and their proposed alternative methodology is based on scientifically unsound and illogical assumptions and contains such serious errors that its results are not valid.