Estimating unmet need for family planning: A new look at the Bradley, Croft, Fishel and Westoff (2012) Algorithm.

Every year, hundreds of millions of women face the painful experience of unwanted pregnancies. To address this situation, access to and use of reproductive health services, including for family planning purposes, has been considered a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). However, many women cannot access family planning services due to a common methodological error in surveys used to estimate unmet needs. In this article, I have discussed this historical error that has been widely accepted by the scientific community as well as perspectives that could reduce the incidence of unwanted pregnancies around the world.