Introduction:

Voluntary interruption of pregnancy is a political issue that polarizes opinions and generates controversy within the health, social, economic, and cultural sectors.

Objective:

To determine the level of knowledge and attitudes regarding voluntary interruption of pregnancy in university students from two Health Sciences programs of Cartagena.

Materials and methods:

A descriptive cross-sectional study; the questionnaire adapted by Marceliano and Medrano was given to 231 students within the Nursing and Medical programs; the data was analyzed through relative and absolute frequencies.

Results:

The level of knowledge of the students was high with a 92.20% (213). Yet, a 37.2% (86) did not know the three reasons why abortion is not considered a crime. 56.7% have negative attitudes regarding signing a petition to legalize abortion and an 18.8% believe that a woman who has an abortion should go to jail.

Conclusion:

The level of knowledge in medical and nursing students is high, yet the patterns show lack of knowledge of the reasons for legalization of abortion according to the current laws and a variety of positive and negative attitudes regarding the voluntary interruption of pregnancy.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )