WASHINGTON, D.C., April 1, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Washington Post has awarded two Pinocchios to a Democratic Party leader for claiming that most women use contraception for reasons other than birth control.
Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, made the comments during a March 25 interview on MSNBC's The Ed Show hosted by Ed Schultz (no relation).
She described the religious freedom objections of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties as “ridiculous.”
“When 99 percent of women used birth control in their lifetime, and 60 percent use it for something other than family planning, it’s outrageous, and I think the Supreme Court will suggest that their case is ridiculous,” she said.
Both halves of that statement are a lie, according to the Post's Glenn Kessler, who awarded the DNC chairwoman two Pinocchios.
The congresswoman's claim that contraceptive use is nearly 100 percent echo former Obama Labor Secretary Hilda Solis' claim that 98 percent of Catholic women use birth control, something the Post similarly branded misleading.
Schultz drew her statistics from two separate reports issued by the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion think tank long associated with Planned Parenthood.
The DNC head misrepresented the number of women who use any form of contraception, Kessler wrote. Less than one-third of sexually active women use the birth control pill (31 percent).
In all, “69 percent of sexually active women who are not pregnant, postpartum, or trying to get pregnant used 'highly effective methods' of birth control” – sterilization, the pill, or an intrauterine device (IUD). Schultz's figure includes the 11 percent of women who said they used “nothing” and others who use Natural Family Planning.
The Guttmacher reports confirm that the vast majority of women use contraception to prevent pregnancy. Only 14 percent of women use the pill for non-contraceptive reasons, not 60 percent. These include treating such conditions as cramps, acne, as well as menstrual regulation. Another 11 percent cited “other unspecified reasons” for taking the pill.
Only four percent use oral contraceptives to treat endometriosis, one of the few health conditions the pill improves.
Abortion advocates often point to contraception's non-abortifacient uses in public debate. Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards wrote in a January USA Today op-ed that “[w]omen use birth control for a variety of medical reasons, including relief of cramps, acne, and endometriosis, a leading cause of infertility.”
Amongst themselves, feminists are less coy. After a new round of blistering reports showing contraception's negative effects, the website Jezebel.com ran an article reminding readers that “Birth control has positive side effects too (like SEX).” (Capitalization in original.)
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Kessler questioned why Schultz would cite the Guttmacher statistics, erroneously or otherwise, since they deal with use of the oral contraceptive. Hobby Lobby objects only to the morning-after pill and the IUD, both of which also act as abortifacients.
Schultz's press secretary, Rebecca Chalif, told the Post, “I don’t see that as a non sequitur.”
The March 25 interview was cordial. Ed Schultz, who is known for his often barbed and inappropriate outbursts on the air, once said, “Debbie Wasserman Schultz is an absolute, 100 percent joke. She is the worst thing that could happen to the DNC.”