A few months ago, Barefoot Paul (admittedly not one of the sharpest knives in the drawer, else why would he be barefoot?) pointed out the following little tidbit of idiocy:

Why should we ponder a lie? Abortion rates were steadily declining until Bush came into office. See here.

To which I aptly responded that the data presented in that piece was not conclusive. It didn’t count a large sample of states, and couldn’t make projections for years we don’t have data for. Well, Factcheck.org, the liberals’ favorite site when it comes to proving everyone wrong has dissected that sample from that same opinion piece and found it sorely lacking as well…

The Birth of a Bad Statistic

The claim that abortions are rising again can be traced back to an opinion piece by Glen Harold Stassen, an ethics professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. His article originally appeared in a web and e-mail publication of Sojourners, a Christian magazine, in October 2004. Several other outlets, including the Houston Chronicle, also ran a similar piece co-authored by Stassen and journalist Gary Krane. The articles generated a good deal of discussion on a number of both liberal and conservative blogs.

Describing himself as “consistently pro-life,” Stassen reported that he “analyzed the data on abortion during the Bush presidency” and reached some “disturbing” conclusions. “Under President Bush, the decade-long trend of declining abortion rates appears to have reversed,” he said. “Given the trends of the 1990s, 52,000 more abortions occurred in the United States in 2002 than would have been expected before this change of direction.”

Stassen’s broad conclusion wasn’t justified by the sketchy information he cited, however. Furthermore, a primary organization he cited specifically as a source for historical data now contradicts him, saying abortions have continued to decline since Bush took office. More about that later.

Hark! What’s this, I see?

Cherrypicking Data

A close reading of Stassen’s article makes clear that he didn’t even pretend to have comprehensive national data on abortion rates. He said he looked at data from 16 states only — and didn’t even name most of them.

Stassen said that in the four states that had already posted statistics for three full years of Bush’s first term, he found that abortion was up. Twelve more states had posted statistics for two years of Bush’s term – 2001 and 2002 – and here the picture was mixed. According to Stassen, “Eight states saw an increase in abortion rates (14.6 percent average increase), and five saw a decrease (4.3 percent average).” A version of the piece in the Houston Chronicle reported instead that four saw a decrease with a 4.3 percent average.

That’s very interesting. A close reading makes that clear? Not to Barefoot Paul, it doesn’t!

This has nothing to do with Bush although indications are that the trend of declining abortion rates is reversing itself under his watch. It’s still nowhere near where it was prior to Clinton. You’ve already been given 2 cites with the hard numbers. A simple Google search of “abortion rate decline” will provide plenty more.

I was surprised when I first saw the article I referenced and spent quite a bit of time vetting it myself. If you really care about this issue, it would be wise to do the same.

Obviously not enough time. After the posting (at 9:26am) I shot it down a mere 17 minutes later with the same argument Factcheck.org is using in this very piece. But they don’t rely merely on vague “inconsistencies” in their piece. They continue to dissect this piece that Barefoot spent so much time vetting because this issue meant so much to him:

Besides the fact that Stassen claimed to have data only from 16 states, the Guttmacher Institute said it is likely that many of the states Stassen picked have higher abortion rates historically, have a higher concentration of population subgroups that tend to have more abortions, and see abortion rates rise more quickly when they do go up. Stassen himself named only Kentucky, Michigan, Pennyslvania and Colorado among the 16 states he says he studied, but his co-author on the Houston Chronicle article listed each state in a separate article posted on the Internet.

The Guttmacher Institute found that two of the states Stassen used had unreliable reporting systems. In Colorado , for instance, where Stassen claimed that rates “skyrocketed 111 percent,” the reporting procedure had been recently changed in order to compensate for historic underreporting. Guttmacher also found Arizona had an inconsistent reporting system.

So much for that… Ahh, but the final nail in the coffin comes here:

The Guttmacher Institute announced its findings May 19. Guttmacher analyzed available government data “as an interim measure until another provider census can be conducted” according to a news release. The interim study analyzed data from 43 states determined to have reliable state reporting systems.

What it found was that the number of abortions decreased nationwide – by 0.8% in 2001 and by another 0.8% in 2002. The abortion rate , which is the number of women having abortions relative to the total population, also decreased 1% in 2001 and 0.9% in 2002. That’s not as rapid a decrease as had been seen in earlier years, but it is a decrease nonetheless.

Now we know why Barefoot Paul is barefoot. He has to keep his shoes off lest his feet not fit in his mouth. Just a piece of advice to those willing to comment here. Don’t say something stupid or make a claim you can’t back up because I never forget what’s said in the comments section and I will smack you around with the truth whenever it comes out.

Source: Factcheck.org