ABSTRACT
The new survey on abortion by the Alan Guttmacher Institute is a good example of how statistics rarely reach us these days without spin or heavy message. The press release for the survey is headlined "Abortion common among all women"; then, in slightly smaller letters, it adds, "even those thought to oppose abortion." Right below, after a bland opening item, the release says that Catholic women have an abortion rate 29 percent higher than Protestant women, while one fifth of women having abortions are born-again or evangelical Christians. The Guttmacher Institute, which is strongly in favor of abortion rights, was clearly inviting reporters to write a "Gotcha!" story about hypocrisy among women in the religious groups most opposed to abortion. The actual survey, however, tells a different story. On a scale showing subgroup abortion rates, it turns out that women who say they are Catholic have an age-adjusted abortion rate of 0.63 based on an index arbitrarily set at 1.0.
