Muddling Statistics 101

Yesterday I pointed out how it was inaccurate for the researchers at liberal "think" tank Third Way to look at teen abortions (including abortions by 18 and 19-year-old girls) as a percentage of total abortions in an attempt to prove that parental consent laws don't have a large effect on abortion. I pointed out how including the abortions of women who are 18 and 19 when you're looking at parental consent laws (which effect girls under 18) is misleading.

I took a little time this morning to compile the statistics Third Way should have compiled if they were looking to be accurate.

Using the Centers for Disease Control Abortion Survelliance statistics from 2001 (the same year Third Way used) I compared under 18 abortions with total abortions. For the 19 states with parental consent laws there were 14,369 abortions performed on minors while there were 250,268 abortions performed on the total population. This means that minor abortions encompass 5.74% of those states' abortions.

For the 12 states with no parental consent or notification law who also record minor abortions there were 19,075 minor abortions while there were 236,153 abortions performed on the total population. This means that minor abortions encompass 8.08% of those states' abortions.

Now that's a much larger relative percentage difference than the one quoted by Third Way using all teen abortion statistics. They found the percentage of teen abortions (including the abortions of non-minor teens) in states with parental consent laws to be 17.6% while the percentage of teen abortions in states with no parental consent or notification laws to be 19.0%.

A couple of questions. 1. Did the researchers at Third Way not understand that non-minor teens aren't affected by parental consent legislation? 2. Or did the researchers compile the correct statistics first, realize they didn't work for them and then looked for another avenue? 3. Should Democrats really be listening to a think tank who can't even get things like this accurate?