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WASHINGTON, D.C., February 19, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Howard Dean said that pro-life Republicans who support the contraception mandate put Barack Obama back in the White House, adding that abstinence education was the creation of sexually ignorant or inexperienced men.

“Women are scared to death of the Republicans because of where [they believe] insurance companies shouldn't pay for birth control pills,” the outspoken 2004 presidential candidate and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee told pollster Scott Rasmussen in a recent interview.

Dean said internal Democratic polls found that pro-life Republican women “didn't want to vote for a Democrat but they all had teenage daughters, and they know that the best way to avoid abortion if you are pro-life is to make sure that your kids are on birth control pills if they need to be.”

That vote enabled the Democrats' pro-abortion agenda, reflected in their 2012 party platform and national convention in Charlotte.

Dean dismissed abstinence as less than “practical” and insulted its supporters.

“Abstinence-only education is just a concoction of men who don't know anything of how sex works, or don't want to know anything,” he said. “It's just a fact.”

In fact, a 2008 study produced by the U.S. House of Representative’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found abstinence-only education effectively deterred young people from becoming sexually active. The committee at the time was controlled by the Democratic Party. Subsequent studies have reached the same conclusion.

Dean told Rasmussen during the brief interview that his party tested the birth control message during the 2008 presidential election.

“We did focus groups on pro-life Republican women in western Pennsylvania when I was chairman of the DNC 5-6 years ago, and McCain was getting clobbered,” Dean said.

His statement is a curious one, as government-sponsored birth control was not an issue in the 2008 election, indicating either that Dean misremembered the contents of his focus groups or that the Democratic Party had planned to attack Republicans on the issue of government-funded contraception for many years before doing so.

Howard Dean served as governor of Vermont before being fueled by MoveOn.org and the movement Left to become the 2004 presidential frontrunner. In 2003, he called the ban on partial birth abortion “a dark day for women.”