Abortion in Brazil: what do the official data say?

According to the World Health Organization, from 2010 to 2014, there were around 55 million abortions worldwide, 45% of which were unsafe. In Brazil, data on abortion and its complications are incomplete. Health care data are only available for the public sector and mortality data depend on investigations of deaths. This study sought to describe the situation of abortion in the country using public data available in the different Information Systems - SIM (mortality), SINASC (live births) and SIH (hospitalization). From 2008 to 2015, there were around 200,000 hospitalizations/year for procedures related to abortion, 1,600 of which for medical and legal reasons. From 2006 to 2015, we found 770 maternal deaths in SIM whose underlying cause was abortion. There was a discreet reduction in the number of deaths from abortion in the period, with regional variation. This number could be increased by around 29% per year if deaths with mentions of abortion and declared with a different underlying cause were considered. Among the deaths reported as resulting from abortion, 1% were abortions due to medical and legal reasons and 56.5% were non-specified abortions. The proportion of deaths from abortion identified in SIH, in relation to the total number of deaths from abortion identified in SIM, varied between 47.4% in 2008 and 72.2% in 2015. Although official health data do not allow us to estimate the number of abortions in Brazil, we were able to establish the profile of women at higher risk for death from abortion: black and indigenous women, with low educational levels, under 14 and over 40 years of age, living in the North Northeast and Central regions, without a partner.

Keywords:
Health Systems; Abortion; Maternal Death; Women’s Health; Reproductive Rights