[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 72 (Thursday, May 26, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1121-E1122]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  FACTS SHOW CLAIMS OF INCREASED ABORTIONS OVER LAST FOUR YEARS DON'T 
                                HOLD UP

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 26, 2005

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, for about a year now a myth has 
been promoted that abortions have increased since President Bush was 
elected in 2000. This myth was launched publicly when Glen Stassen and 
Gary Krane published a piece in October of 2004, called ``Why abortion 
rate is up in Bush years'' that attempted to make the case that 
President Bush's pro-life policies have not been effective in 
decreasing abortion.
  This mantra was picked up and repeated by many public figures and 
organizations who do not hold pro-life positions, but the facts simply 
do not support their claims. In fact, abortion has continued to 
decrease while President Bush has been in office, as demonstrated by an 
Annenberg Political Fact Check piece posted yesterday at 
www.factcheck.org and called ``Abortions rising under Bush? Not true. 
How that false claim came to be and lives on.''
  To debunk the myth that the number of abortions have increased over 
the last 5 years, I am submitting the Annenberg Political Fact Check 
analysis to the Congressional Record: 

        [From the Annenberg Political Fact Check, May 25, 2005]

  The Biography of a Bad Statistic--Abortions Rising Under Bush? Not 
          True. How That False Claim Came to be -and Lives On


                                Summary

       Politicians from Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Howard 
     Dean have recently contended that abortions have increased 
     since George W. Bush took office in 2001.
       This claim is false. It's based on an an opinion piece that 
     used data from only 16 States. A study by the Alan Guttmacher 
     Institute of 43 States found that abortions have actually 
     decreased.


                                Analysis

       A number of politicians and organizations have been 
     circulating an interesting and surprising idea: that 
     abortions have gone up under George W. Bush's watch. The 
     claim is repeated by supporters of abortion rights as 
     evidence that Bush's anti-abortion policies have backfired, 
     or at least been ineffective.
       But the claim is untrue. In fact, according to the 
     respected Alan Guttmacher Institute, a 20-year decline in 
     abortion rates continued after Bush took office, as shown in 
     this graph: Source: Alan Guttmacher Institute, ``Trends in 
     Abortion in the United States''
       Here's the story of how a false idea took hold.


                      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.


                        Hillary Clinton Uses It

       Stassen offered his article as evidence that Bush's 
     economic policies were driving pregnant women to abortion. 
     And although he opposes abortion, his claim was soon picked 
     up and repeated uncritically by the other side--supporters of 
     abortion rights. In a speech to family-planning providers in 
     New York on January 24, 2005, Sen. Hillary Clinton recounted 
     decreases in the abortion rate that occurred in her husband's 
     administration, then lamented that the situation had changed. 
     She repeated exactly some of the figures that Stassen had 
     given in his Houston Chronicle article.
       Clinton: But unfortunately, in the last few years, while we 
     are engaged in an ideological debate instead of one that uses 
     facts and evidence and common sense, the rate of abortion is 
     on the rise in some states. In the three years since 
     President Bush took office, 8 states saw an increase in 
     abortion rates (14.6 percent average increase), and four saw 
     a decrease (4.3 percent average), so we have a lot of work 
     still ahead of us.
       Clinton was careful not to state flatly that abortions were 
     increasing nationally. She spoke only of ``some States'' in 
     which the rate had increased. However, she omitted any 
     mention of other States where abortions were going down, 
     inviting her listeners to conclude that the national trend 
     to fewer abortions had reversed itself since Bush took 
     office.
       And in fact a few days later, in an interview on NBC's Meet 
     the Press on January 30, 2005, Senator John Kerry claimed 
     that abortions were up, period:
       Kerry: And do you know that in fact abortion has gone up in 
     these last few years with the draconian policies that 
     Republicans have. . . .
       A Kerry spokesman confirmed at the time to FactCheck.org 
     that Kerry was relying on the Stassen article for his 
     information.
       Finally, as recently as May 24, 2005, Democratic National 
     Committee chairman Howard Dean also asserted on NBC News' 
     Meet the Press:
       Dean: You know that abortions have gone up 25 percent since 
     George Bush was President?
       Dean's ``statistic'' went unchallenged by moderator Tim 
     Russert, so millions of viewers probably got the impression 
     that Dean's very specific 25 percent figure was correct. But 
     Dean was wrong--and by a wide margin.
       We asked the Democratic National Committee repeatedly where 
     Dean got his 25 percent figure, but we got no response. Even 
     if Stassen's estimate of 52,000 additional abortions were 
     correct, that would figure to an increase of less than 4 
     percent. And in any case the rate is going down, not up, 
     according to the most authoritative figures available.


                           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 2 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.
       So Stassen was projecting findings onto the entire country 
     from 12 States that he said had showed an increase and 5 (or 
     maybe 4) that he said had shown a decrease. That leaves a 
     total of 34 other States for which Stassen had no data 
     whatsoever.
       Furthermore, Stassen is contradicted by one of the very 
     organizations whose data he cites. The only primary source of 
     data that Stassen cites specifically in the article is the 
     Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization that 
     conducts a periodic survey of all known abortion providers, 
     which numbered nearly 2,000 at last count. Guttmacher's 
     statistics are widely used and respected by all sides in the 
     abortion debate. It is the only organization to compile 
     and publish national abortion-rate data other than the 
     federal Center for Disease Control. CDC's official 
     statistics, however, run only through 2001, so they shed 
     no light on what has happened since Bush took office.
       And Guttmacher--as we shall see--now says abortion rates 
     have decreased since

[[Page E1122]]

     Bush took office. And that's based on data from 43 States, 
     not just 16.


                        De-bunking the statistic

       Stassen's numbers, and the widespread acceptance they 
     seemed to be getting, prompted the Guttmacher Institute to 
     conduct a special analysis to update its comprehensive census 
     of abortion providers for the year 2000. The increases that 
     Stassen reported ``would be a significant change in a long-
     standing trend in the U.S.,'' Leila Darabi of the institute 
     explained to Factcheck.
       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, Pennsylvania 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.


                               The Facts

       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 percent in 2001 and by another 0.8 percent 
     in 2002. The abortion rate, which is the number of women 
     having abortions relative to the total population, also 
     decreased 1 percent in 2001 and 0.9 percent in 2002. That's 
     not as rapid a decrease as had been seen in earlier years, 
     but it is a decrease nonetheless.
       We give much weight to Guttmacher's analysis. Their figures 
     are widely used and accepted by both anti-abortion groups and 
     abortion-rights advocates. Their surveys of abortion 
     providers go back to 1973, and Stassen cites them himself as 
     the source for the number of abortions in 2000.
       Guttmacher has little motive to make Bush and his anti-
     abortion policies look good. The institute was founded in 
     1968 in honor of a former president of the Planned Parenthood 
     Federation of America, and describes its mission as being 
     ``to protect the reproductive choice of all women and men in 
     the United States and throughout the world.'' Had Stassen's 
     numbers proven accurate, the Institute ``would have reported 
     and widely publicized a rise in abortion rates,'' said 
     Darabi. But facts are facts.

                          ____________________