By Randall K. O'Bannon, Ph.D., NRLC Director of Education

Editor's note. Part Two is a follow up to Monday's column on the death of Tim Russert. Many of you responded with your own thoughts.

Someone once remarked that "you're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts." In a discussion with the Weekly Standard deputy online editor John McCormack, pro-abortion Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean showed that, when it came to abortion, he believes and promotes a lot of ideas that just aren't so (Weekly Standard, 6/12/08). Let's look briefly at the background.

The 2004 Democratic Party Platform stated what many Democratic candidates have said before and since: that they "proudly stand for a woman's right to choose" and believe that "Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare."

Dean, once the governor of Vermont, offered a related platitude which also combines a fervent embrace of abortion and a timid/meaningless assurance that the party is not the party of abortion on demand. Dean told McCormack that the Democratic party believes that "individuals have a right to make up their own minds in personal matters...but this party also believes that we ought to significantly reduce the number of abortions in this country." Let's deconstruct these two sound bites.

Abortion is legal, but hardly safe. Women continue to die and be injured each year as a result of both surgical and chemical abortion procedures. Abortion has become more rare--the best efforts of Dean and the National Democratic Party to the contrary notwithstanding-- due to the hard work of pro-life Americans and their pro-life leaders.

But it wasn't just the usual contradictory pro-abortion bromides that made Dean's comments so interesting. He dealt with the substantive impact of public policy on abortion and got it all wrong.

Misconception #1: Public funding of abortion does not increase the abortion rate

McCormack asked Dean why, if they wanted to reduce abortion, Obama and the Democratic Party supported taxpayer funding of abortion. which, as McCormack noted "studies show significantly increases the abortion rate."

Dean called that claim "Total nonsense. It's total nonsense that public funding" raised the rate. Oh, really?

The Guttmacher Institute (GI) used to be Planned Parenthood's think-tank. No one would accuse it of twisting data in a pro-life direction.

McCormack cited a 1994-1995 GI survey of abortion patients which concluded that "in states where Medicaid pays for abortions, women covered by Medicaid have an abortion rate 3.9 times that of women who are not covered, while in states that do not permit Medicaid funding for abortions, Medicaid recipients are only 1.6 times as likely as nonrecipients to have abortions."

McCormack also cited a more current study by University of Alabama Professor Michael New, which found that states restricting the use of Medicaid funds to pay for abortion saw a drop of 29.66 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age.

Misconception #2: Vermont funds abortion and has lower abortion rates

While hesitant to directly challenge GI (given its pro-abortion credentials), Dean did tell McCormack "as the governor of one of the four states which provides public funding, I find that hard to believe because our rate is not higher than the rate of corresponding states nearby."

To check this claim, McCormack looked at abortion rates for New Hampshire, Vermont's next door neighbor, which did not fund abortions, in years when Dean was Vermont's governor. McCormack found Vermont's abortion rate was 67% higher in 1992, 55% higher in 1994, and 100% higher that New Hampshire in 1996

Misconception #3: Vermont was one of only four states to fund abortion.

Dean's claim that only a handful of states fund abortions for Medicaid recipients is simply inaccurate. As McCormack points out, four states fund abortion voluntarily, while 13 other states, Vermont among them, fund abortions because of court orders.

Misconception #4: Public funding of abortion is not a live issue in the current political campaign.

Dean told McCormack that "I don't believe that this has been debated, that this has been brought up by any candidate...I have not heard any discussion about public funding for abortion in this campaign at all." Yet speaking to Planned Parenthood in July 2007, Obama promised, "The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act."

One of the provisions of the bill, of which Obama is a cosponsor, is that abortion not be "discriminated" against "through the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information." In other words, if government funds childbirth and birthing centers, it would also legally be obligated to fund abortions and abortion clinics.

After the speech, Obama told a reporter from the Chicago Tribune that he would cover "reproductive health care services" in his proposed expansion of access to health insurance. McCormack points out that this would entail the funding of abortion for anyone wanting it, not just Medicaid recipients.

Misconception #5: Democrats  will be more successful reducing abortions than Republican McCain

Against years of evidence to the contrary, Dean maintained that "I think we'll be much more successful than Senator McCain" in reducing the number abortions because, he claimed, that McCain believes an "insurance company shouldn't be allowed to pay for birth control pills."

Dean's claim is both mistaken and grossly misleading. McCain's vote was simply a vote in favor of a conscience clause that would protect the right of insurance companies not to have to pay for pills or procedures that violated their faith. Even Dean should be able to grasp that a vote against compulsory coverage is not a vote to prohibit an insurance company from paying for anything.

Those who pay attention to the political process will not be surprised by Dean's latest musings. Back before the 2006 elections, Dean was front and center among those pushing the bogus claim that abortions had increased under President George Bush. (The assertion was based on the "analysis" of some limited abortion numbers from a few selected states by a California theology professor.

When full data came in, it actually showed a drop of 9% during Bush's first term (later results are not yet available).

The claim then, as it appears to be now, is that those who want to reduce abortions should vote for the politicians and the party that promotes and would pay for abortion.

Howard Dean may believe it, but the facts, as well as common sense, say otherwise.

Please send your thoughts and comments to Dave Andrusko at daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

Part Two