Howard Dean on Meet the Press: Inventing Abortion Data
May 23, 2005 | By Charmaine Yoest
Here's what Howard Dean had to say on Meet the Press yesterday about abortion:
Howard Dean
on Meet the Press
DR. DEAN: . . .You know that abortions have gone up 25 percent since George Bush was president?
And here's the truth:
This data is from the Alan Guttmacher Institute (research organization founded by Planned Parenthood). In fact, this chart includes data from a press release just issued on Thursday, entitled "DECADES-LONG DECLINE IN NUMBER AND RATE OF U.S. ABORTIONS CONTINUES, NEW ANALYSIS SHOWS":
A new analysis from The Alan Guttmacher Institute shows that U.S. abortion rates continued to decline in 2001 and 2002, although the rate of decline has slowed since the early 1990s. The Institute estimates that 1,303,000 abortions took place in the United States in 2001-0.8% fewer than the 1,313,000 in 2000. In 2002, the number of abortions declined again, to 1,293,000, or another 0.8%. The rate of abortion also declined, from 21.3 procedures per 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 2000 to 21.1 in 2001 and 20.9 in 2002.
Wondering what the political agenda is here? Why would Dean lie about abortion data (so outrageously)?
The Guttmacher press release mentions "speculat[ion] that abortion has increased as a result of Bush administration policies," and then the President and CEO, Sharon Camp, says that: "It takes time for political decisions to be reflected in the statistical data, so it is too soon to tell what the impact of Bush administration policies will be on U.S. abortion rates."
So there you have it: It's President Bush's fault that the number of abortions has been increasing. Except that they haven't been. Yes, the truth. Such a pesky thing.
Take a look at the whole transcript. This is just a small slice of the comedy Dean served up yesterday. . .
For more abortion decline data, see here.
And here's a link to a series of articles Ramesh Ponnuru has written on abortion decline.
UPDATE May 27: Welcome Michelle Malkin readers. . . she has more great links and info here. See also my post above, "Those Pesky Facts," about the Democrat's underlying claim that abortion and unemployment are linked. Michelle links to a post by FactCheck.org which provides a response from Stassen.
LINK UPDATE:
More links: Michelle Malkin and Just One Minute here and here with excellent analysis on the Democratic talking points Dean was using.
Comments
In the grand footsteps of C-BS and most recently, Newsweek, Howard Dean continues with the classic "it's fake, but accurate" approach to the truth.
Remember, the old saying remains true, Bush lied, (babies, soldiers, elderly, puppies, insert-appropriate-victim-here_____ etc.) died.
p.s. Charmaine, I'm still not sure you have the linebreaks enabled for comments yet---I'm still coding my linebreaks manually...just a heads up.
Posted by: kyer | May 24, 2005 12:16 AM