Howard Dean on Abortion

Here are some snippets from Howard Dean during Sunday's appearance on Meet the Press:

We have been forced into the idea of "We're going to defend abortion." I don't know anybody who thinks abortion is a good thing. I don't know anybody in either party who is pro-abortion. The issue is not whether we think abortion is a good thing. The issue is whether a woman has a right to make up her own mind about her health care, or a family has a right to make up their own mind about how their loved ones leave this world.

Too bad Tim Russert never asked Dean why nobody thinks that abortion is a good thing. Many pro-choice commentators will say over and over again that abortion isn't a good thing and that they aren't in favor of abortion, they're just in favor of "choice" but nobody asks them why abortion isn't a good thing or why they want to decrease abortions.

We'd like to make abortion rare. You know that abortions have gone up 25 percent since George Bush was president?

Why should abortion be more rare? Is it because abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being? Why should intentionally killing an innocent human be legal?

25 percent? Dean is the head of the DNC and he goes on national television with this bogus claim. This is beyond embarrassing. Is he that ignorant or was he just hoping no one would check his claim? My guess is Dean is lying and hoping his cheap shot on national television will be heard by more people than the refutations to this obvious untruth. Dean probably has no source for his statistic because I haven't seen anyone else claim that abortions have gone up 25%. Even Glenn Stassen's bogus statistics didn't come close to saying abortions have gone up 25%. The Alan Guttmacher Institute even released a report last week which said abortions have gone down in 2001 and 2002. I've seen no estimates on abortion numbers from the CDC or the AGI for 2003 or 2004.

But let's ferret out what reality would be if Dean's absurd, unsourced claim was true. On the AGI's latest report they mention that according to their survey and research 1,313,000 abortions were performed in 2000. If abortions went up 25% since Bush took office in early 2001 that means that according to Dr. Dean there were 1,641,250 abortions in 2004.

Or we can look at the statistics from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). In their 2000 report, the CDC states "(a) total of 857,475 legal induced abortions were reported to CDC for 2000 from 49 reporting areas" (which doesn't include California, Alaska, and New Hampshire). If Dean's "25%" statistic is correct, then in 2004 there were 1,071,844 abortions performed in the same 49 reporting areas.

We need to reduce the number of abortions in this country. There is common ground between us and pro-life Democrats, and we ought to find that common ground.

Dean claims he wants to reduce the number of abortions in this country and maybe he's being truthful. However, you have to wonder why someone who wants to reduce abortions would be in favor of abortions that cost only $5. For more information, here's a good American Spectator article that discusses Dean's record on abortion in Vermont.

It is an incredibly difficult area. It is an area which is conflicted. I don't know anybody who ever had an abortion who feels, "Oh, boy, this is just great. I can't wait to have another one." That's not what this is about. This is a very difficult, horrible choice.

What's so horrible about abortion? Why don't women think abortion is great? Dean is right about one thing. The "choice" to have an abortion is difficult and horrible.