Obama SO Wrong on Contraception Numbers; Could Obama’s 99% in Reality be as Low as 31%?

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President Obama telling us that 99% of all women use contraception.

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“Facts” recently claimed by the Obama administration during the Contraception Mandate debate:

  • Obama: Nearly 99 percent of all women have relied on contraception at some point in their lives – 99 percent.
  • Sebelius: Made the same claim twice on national television programs.
  • Obama Campaign Manager Cutter: Made the same claim twice on CNN.
  • Pelosi: 98% of Catholic women use birth control

Yet CNS news reports: 13.9% of women have never had sex, so the above claims cannot be true. This puts the maximum possible number of women using contraception as 86.1%.

The Original Center for Disease Control Study

O.K., so CNS News went to the original government study where they found two qualifying statements:

  • Researchers only studied women who had had sex and excluded those who had not
  • Researchers listed all women who had ever, even just once in a lifetime, used any form of contraception.

By accounting for these groups, CNS news concluded that 38.2 percent of sexually active women were not using contraception at the time the study was conducted. 38.2% of 86.1% subtracted means that we are now down to 53.2 % of women using contraception.   So Obama and Co. were misquoting the study they referred to.

But it gets worse:
Here’s a graph from the study:

Center for Disease Control, Dept of Health and Human Services Contraception Use Report, page 18

Look at the figures highlighted in yellow.
Included in Obama’s 99% of sexually active women “using contraception” are 23% of all participants in the survey who are using a form of periodic abstinence; either calendar rythm or natural family planning.

Obama is Counting Women Who Use Abstinence as Contraceptive Users

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS COUNTING WOMEN WHO ARE USING ABSTINENCE (23% of sexually active women) AS CONTRACEPTIVE USERS!

So now the number of women using contraception shrinks further. We were previously down to 53.2%.  Don’t ask me to calculate where we are now– I am not sure my math is that good! Do we lose another 23% of 53% when we don’t count those using abstinence, and are we now down to 41%?

34% of Women Have No Problem With Abstinence

Incidentally, if you count the periodic abstinence women (23% of 86.1%)  and the women who abstain totally from sex (13.9%), we find that 34% of all women are fine with abstinence.  Something that Judeo-Christian principles have advised for millennia.

25% of Women Refused to Participate in the Intrusive Study

We ALSO have not yet accounted for the 25% of women who refused to participate in the 80-minute study. The original survey, the Center for Disease Control, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report entitled Use of Contraception in the United States: 1982-2008 actually stated that 25% of women selected did not participate in the study and that the in-home interview took 80 minutes to complete.

Theorectical Lower Limit for Contraceptive Use

That would bring us down to 31% of women using contraception, not the Obama administration’s 99%.
It also skews the population; any woman who has a moderate degree of modesty/privacy about her sex life, as well as any woman who does not have 80 minutes to spare for a survey, were not included in this study.

What is the Actual Number?

Of course, I am not claiming that only 31% of women use contraceptives in the U.S.  The above graph also shows us that many women use numerous forms of birth control which overlap.  So some of the women using abstinence techniques may have in their lifetime used another technique as well.  However, this analysis does show that Obama’s 99% number is ridiculously misleading, and that it is theoretically possible, based on the data, that the number of women using abstinence techniques could actually outnumber the number of women using contraceptive techniques; 34% vs. 31%.

We will probably never know the exact numbers, since sexuality is a usually a very private matter, and there is a large segment of the population which will never participate in such studies.

Bottom Line

The Obama administration  can choose between two explanations for this gaffe which was repeated by the administration dozens of times:

  • They are scientifically impaired and unable to read the CDC report table above.
  • They are purposely distorting the truth to their own political advantage.

Doesn’t look good either way.

Is a regime which cannot correctly read data off simple scientific charts trying to mandate dictate our national sexual mores?
Or is the regime lying to us blatantly whenever it suits their agenda of the moment?

Time for a regime change!
Vote in November!