In a report published in the Bioethics section of the May 2012 issue of the journal Ginecología y Obstetricia de México, 1 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. As Koch and colleagues note, that approach, the abortion incidence complications method (AICM), has been applied to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru. Their critique focuses largely on the most recent Guttmacher publication on the incidence of abortion and abortion complications in Colombia.2 We strongly dispute their criticisms, as well as an alternative methodology that they suggest, which is based on assumptions that are both simplistic and incorrect. 

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