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!

Wisconsin State Capitol

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UPDATE: View the November 16, 2011 Assembly Committee on Education hearing HERE.

UPDATE: Notice has just gone out on November 9, 2011, that the Assembly Committee on Education will be hearing testimony on SB 237 on November 16, 2011. In the Assembly, the bill will be called  Assembly Bill 337, AB 337) .  It is not yet clear when the Assembly will be voting on this sex ed bill which was passed by the Senate.

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SB 237 Passed in the Senate

Wisconsin’s Senate Bill 237 (SB 237), the Strong Communities and Healthy Kids Act, was passed by Wisconsin’s Senate on Wednesday, Oct 26, 2011.
The bill was passed by a narrow margin, with 17 Republicans voting for SB 237 and 16 Democrats voting against.

The purpose of the bill was to reverse the very liberal “Healthy Youth Act” passed in 2010, which required a uniform sex ed program across all of Wisconsin (designed by Planned Parenthood) which underplayed abstinence and required the teaching graphic of sexual material to young children.
SB 237 still allows liberal communities to continue teaching the permissive and graphic material, but no longer requires ALL Wisconsin communities to teach this material.  Under SB 237, each community is permitted to create its own standards, but must teach that abstinence is the only completely reliable preventative for STDs and pregnancy.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) cites abstinence as the only completely reliable preventative for STDs and for pregnancy.

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What do Americans and Wisconsinites want?

In the U.S., 26 States have CONSERVATIVE sex ed laws, similar to SB 237, requiring that abstinence be taught in sex ed programs as the favored means of avoiding pregnancy and STDs.  Conversely, 13 States have LIBERAL sex ed laws, similar to last year’s HYA in Wisconsin, which require the graphic teaching of “barrier methods,” such as condom demonstration, in the classroom.  Opponents of the liberal Healthy Youth Act call it the “Un-Healthy Youth Act,” or the “Promoting Promiscuity Act,” because it does not permit emphasizing that abstinence from sexual activity before marriage is the only reliable way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.  Under HYA, stating the superiority of abstinence would constitute showing bias against sexually active students.

• So two thirds of States with sex ed laws have conservative laws.
• Two thirds of American parents and teens favor abstinence before marriage, according to a U.S. Health and Human Services study released by the Obama administration in 2010.
• Wisconsin, previously more liberal, shifted to a Republican majority in the last election, November, 2010. Recent recall efforts by Democrats failed to upset that conservative majority; hence the creation of SB 237, reflecting more conservative attitudes.  The liberals who have enjoyed a majority in Wisconsin for many years, are very indignant about the shift in power, as evidenced by the March 2011 demonstrations at the Madison Capitol over government employee union privileges, which made national news. continue reading…

Wisconsin Sex Ed:  There’s an Elephant in the Room

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It’s become pretty challenging, trying to cut through the rhetoric, to understand what’s actually going on with the Wisconsin Sex Ed bill.  At first glance, the political posturing and contradictions are bewildering—until you look at the raw data on teen pregnancy and STDs, and realize that everyone is tiptoeing around an elephant in the room.

Some of the Background:

In 2010, Wisconsin’s liberal legislature passed a liberal sex ed bill, called the Healthy Youth Act, or HYA. Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion provider, gets to design the curriculum.

In 2011, the new, now conservative legislature which was elected in Wisconsin in November 2010, has recently proposed a modification to the liberal sex ed bill, which would allow conservative communities to opt out of the most progressive requirements of the “old” 2010 sex ed bill (HYA), such as opting out of the condom demonstration in the classroom requirement.  This proposal is called Senate Bill 237,  or SB 237, or Strong Communities Healthy Kids Act or SCHKA

Outside the SB 237 Senate Hearing  (Photos of Senate hearing by Tom Reitz)

More details:

Conservative objections to HYA (now in use in Wisconsin):

1. HYA requires Sex Ed with a liberal and permissive spin or no sex ed at all:
If sex ed is taught, every community in Wisconsin must teach ALL elements of the curriculum outlined in HYA , including the demonstration of condom use in the classroom.  Misleading phrases such as “medically accurate” and “age appropriate” are used in HYA to require the teaching of detailed explicit sexual practices and methods, including the practices previously considered by law, and still considered by numerous religions, to be deviant, unhealthy, risky, and damaging to society. continue reading…

Background

Not unexpectedly, there has been some discussion regarding the modification of Madison’s previous Sex Ed bill, the “Healthy Youth Act” (HYA), which was passed before Wisconsin’s transition of power (to Republican) in January 2011.

The “Healthy Youth Act” required that all Sex Ed programs state-wide teach the proper use of contraceptives and barrier methods (i.e. demonstrate condom use in the classroom).  It also failed to provide abstinence training to pupils.  In other words, it favored the more liberal approach, “let’s give up and assume that all kids have sex, and let’s try to equip them with the knowledge on how to reduce the risks.”  Planned Parenthood was selected to create the new Sex Ed program.

Two thirds of America favors abstinence until marriage, so it is not unexpected that when Republicans came into power, some modifications were proposed to the previous bill.  In the absence of abstinence training, if schools provided instruction on the “proper use of contraceptives and barrier methods,” it was feared that the take-home message could easily be the condoning  of promiscuity and early sexual experimentation. continue reading…

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Survey of Adolescents and Their Parents: Attitudes and Opinions About Sex and Abstinence. Project No. 60005  Final Report February 26, 2009; released Aug 8, 2010:

U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services

Origial PDF Text of National Survey of Adolescents and Their Parents: Attitudes and Opinions About Sex and Abstinence

Conclusions:

• 70% of U.S. parents support abstinence until marriage
• 60% of U.S. teens support abstinence until marriage

The Obama administration refused to release this study for 18 months after its completion, stonewalling numerous public requests for release.

September is here, and everyone’s getting ready for school. I stumbled across a Badger Herald article entitled “Great Sexpectations,” which flippantly steered new UW student arrivals toward sexual experimentation, and towards facilities such as Planned Parenthood.

So I submitted a comment. (Hope it gets published!)

Motto: Numen Lumen ("God, our Light")

Flippant attitudes toward sex lead to pain and anguish.

The human body carries the ability to create new human life. It’s called sex.

Misuse of this ability, just like misuse of any other human function, can lead to great trouble.

A recent government study has shown that 70% of parents and 54 % of Teens say that sex before marriage is wrong. Release of this study was delayed by the Obama administration for 18months (study dated Feb ’09, released only Aug 23, ’10), presumably because the administration did not like the results of the study.

The fact of the matter is that there are reasons for caution and for the morality that has been respected by our civilization for thousands of years. The reasons include reluctance to kill preborn children, reluctance to deal with psychological problems, depression, STD’s, and reluctance to destroy one’s chances of finding true love in a good marriage in the future.

Bascom Hill

At UW Madison, you will rarely hear this more cautious and conservative attitude that is shared by the vast majority in America. At UW Madison, you will most likely hear a forced, radical liberal agenda, driven by the pursuit of immediate gratification, regardless of future consequences to yourself or to others. UW Madison is often quite intolerant of Christian sexuality.

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Hopefully anybody admitted to a university with the academic caliber of UW Madison will already have learned the benefits of delayed gratification, and will not jump into recreational sex as this article seems to condone. DO your homework (start with the links in this article), find out the consequences of your actions, and take the trouble to locate the 54% of teens in your class who think it’s wrong to have sex before marriage.

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There are lots of groups on campus who can support you in this choice – starting with St. Paul’s Catholic Center — for the numerous students coming from Catholic homes, or for anyone else interested in a Christian perspective on life. Madison’s Cathedral Parish is another great place to look for fellowship and support in a holy and healthy lifestyle.