...The Utah Republican put a chart on display, purporting to show that over the last decade, the number of prevention services provided by the health care group has steadily declined, while the number of abortions has steadily increased...
...When Richards said she'd never seen it before, Chaffetz replied: 'It comes straight from your annual reports.'
Moments later, Richards shot back: 'My lawyers just informed me that the source of this information is Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion group. I would check your source.'
Oops...
...It apparently didn't occur to Chaffetz to actually look at the darned thing--it literally says, 'Source: Americans United for Life,' in all capital letters, on the chart he was so excited about."
eye'm thynkin': I've copied Chaffetz' chart and an honest rendering of the same numbers below. If you look at them carefully, you will see that Mr. Chaffetz' chart conveniently neglects to include a Y axis, so the creators could plot the numbers anywhere on the graph they chose, which allowed them to make it appear that the number of abortions performed (327,000) was much larger than the number of health screenings provided (935,573)."
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| Note: The chart on the left has no Y axis, numbers can be put wherever the chart creator wants in order to enforce the point he wishes to make. The chart on the right, with a Y axis added uses the same figures, but tells an entirely different story. |
As for why cancer screenings have gone down, Ms. Richards pointed out that "some of the services...dropped in frequency because of changing medical standards about who should be screened and how often."
A third chart, which includes all the health care services provided by Planned Parenthood compared to the abortions it performs gives an even clearer picture:
Thank you to Mother Jones for the charts.
Read more at MSNBC
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