Math isn’t everyone’s best subject, and statistics can be even harder to compute. However, the head of Iowa’s Right to Life organization apparently cannot even comprehend the most elementary of calculations. Either that, or she is just willfully ignorant.
You may be wondering what I am talking about, so let me start from the beginning. Last week, statistics were released by the Iowa Department of Public Health that showed abortion rates in Iowa had dropped over the past 10 years.
Now, the logical explanation for this decrease would be the increase in access to birth control options for Iowa women. It could also be due to the fact that long term methods of birth control, such as the IUD or arm implant, became free under Obamacare. Considering that those methods often cost up to $1000, the ability to have the cost covered would greatly increase their use.
Despite these logical explanations though, what did the Iowa Right to Life Director claim the drop was related to?
Pictures of babies and crisis pregnancy centers. . .
Ignoring the blatant fallacies in that assertion, what made her comments even more ridiculous, and prompted my mathematic diatribe earlier, was when her refutation of the logical answer defied the actual numbers. She claimed the drop couldn’t be related to birth control because most birth controls fail.
Quoting directly from the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (you know, the people who have endured years and years of schooling on this topic), the following methods of birth control have the following failure rates when used correctly:
- Male condom = 2.0%
- IUD (ParaGard®) = 0.6%
- IUD (Mirena®) = 0.1%
- 1-month injectable = 0.05%
- 3-month injectable = 0.3%
- Pill = 0.3%
- Implants = 0.05%
- Patch = 0.3%
Clearly, the numbers speak for themselves. Most birth controls actually have a very, very low chance of failure. Moving back to my original diatribe, I am not sure whether the Iowa Right to Life Director is just really bad at math, or whether she is choosing to remain willfully ignorant as to the cold, hard facts. Either way, I think the numbers speak for themselves and women wanting to plan their families would do best to listen to a licensed medical professional over someone who can’t seem to understand basic statistics.
Featured image via Dollar Photo Club.
