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Obama: ... I am pro-choice. I believe in Roe v. Wade, and I come to that conclusion not because I'm pro-abortion, but because, ultimately, I don't think women make these decisions casually. ... And so, for me, the goal right now should be – and this is where I think we can find common ground. And by the way, I've now inserted this into the Democratic Party platform, is how do we reduce the number of abortions? The fact is that although we have had a president who is opposed to abortion over the last eight years, abortions have not gone down and that is something we have to address.

This is an erroneous claim that we first tracked down and debunked more than three years ago when it was being repeated by Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean and Sens. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, among others. See our article, "Biography of a Bad Statistic" from May 26, 2005, for full details on how a liberal theologian first came up with this notion. The fact is, it is false. The best source we know of for statistics on the number of abortions is the Guttmacher Institute, whose figures are cited regularly by both sides in the abortion debate.

And Guttmacher says prominently on its Web site:

Guttmacher Institute: In 2005, 1.21 million abortions were performed, down from 1.31 million abortions in 2000.

In fact, Guttmacher's most recent published figures show 106,800 fewer abortions in George Bush's fifth year than in Bill Clinton's last year in office. That represents an 8 percent decline in the number of abortions and an even larger decline – 9 percent – in the rate of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15 through 44. 

Guttmacher bases this finding on a survey of all 1,787 known abortion providers in the U.S.

We asked the Obama campaign where the candidate got his information, and we're still waiting for a response.

It should be noted that there's little to show the decline has come about because of anything President Bush did or didn't do. In fact,  the number of abortions in the U.S. has been falling steadily since the 1980s regardless of whether the person in the White House favored a legal right to abortion or opposed it.

Guttmacher's figures show the number peaked several years after the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that created a national legal right to abortion, held fairly steady throughout Republican Ronald Reagan's presidency, and has declined through the presidencies of Republican George H.W. Bush, Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican George W. Bush.

And just for the record, the authors of Guttmacher's study said in March 2008 that they can't tell exactly why the decline is taking place. Reasons probably include "better contraceptive use, lower levels of unintended pregnancy, more women carrying unintended pregnancies to term and greater difficulties accessing abortion services in some geographic areas," the authors said.

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  • Posted By: Jim Johnson @ 10/16/2008 1:00:54 PM

    Obama's view of the future of America - Socialism which is the next step to Communism!!


    Under socialism a ruling class of intellectuals, bureaucrats and social planners decide what people want or what is good for society and then use the coercive power of the State to regulate, tax, and redistribute the wealth of those who work for a living. In other words, socialism is a form of legalized theft.

    The morality of socialism can be summed-up in two words: envy and self-sacrifice. Envy is the desire to not only possess another's wealth but also the desire to see another's wealth lowered to the level of one's own. Socialism's teaching on self-sacrifice was nicely summarized by two of its greatest defenders, Hermann Goering and Bennito Mussolini. The highest principle of Nazism (National Socialism), said Goering, is: "Common good comes before private good." Fascism, said
    Mussolini, is "a life in which the individual, through the sacrifice of his own private interests??realizes that completely spiritual existence in which his value as a man lies."

    Socialism is the social system which institutionalizes envy and self-sacrifice: It is the social system which uses compulsion and the organized violence of the State to expropriate wealth from the producer class for its redistribution to the parasitical class.

    Despite the intellectuals' psychotic hatred of capitalism, it is the only moral and just social system.

    Capitalism is the only moral system because it requires human beings to deal with one another as traders--that is, as free moral agents trading and selling goods and services on the basis of mutual consent.

    Capitalism is the only just system because the sole criterion that determines the value of thing exchanged is the free, voluntary, universal judgement of the consumer. Coercion and fraud are anathema to the free-market system.

    It is both moral and just because the degree to which man rises or falls in society is determined by the degree to which he uses his mind. Capitalism is the only social system that rewards merit, ability and achievement, regardless of one's birth or station in life.

    Yes, there are winners and losers in capitalism. The winners are those who are honest, industrious, thoughtful, prudent, frugal, responsible, disciplined, and efficient. The losers are those who are shiftless, lazy, imprudent, extravagant, negligent, impractical, and inefficient. [What about the role of luck­being in the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time? R. R. Pope}

    Capitalism is the only social system that rewards virtue and punishes vice. This applies to both the business executive and the carpenter, the lawyer and the factory worker.

  • Posted By: Krohn @ 10/12/2008 8:33:43 PM

    THE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CANDIDATE!

    NEVER IN THE HISTORY OF THIS COUNTRY HAS A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BEEN GIVEN SUCH A FREE PASS BY THE PRESS AND JUST ABOUT EVERYONE ELSE!

    I AM WAITING FOR A BLACK PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE TO MAKE IT ON HIS OWN MERIT.

    COLIN POWELL COMES TO MIND!

  • Posted By: Krohn @ 10/09/2008 7:26:28 PM

    They harassed her until she registered to vote six times!:
    http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?maven_referralObject=3145562&maven_referralPlaylistId=&sRevUrl=http://www.foxnews.com/politics/

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