Howard Dean's Abortion Contortions

Sex, lies and death-from the DNC. The DNC chairman gets his facts wrong.The Dailey Standard:
YESTERDAY MORNING AT the Christian Science Monitor breakfast meeting, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean was asked whether the Democratic platform on abortion should be amended. That will be up to Barack Obama and his delegates, Dean said, adding that the Democratic party believes "individuals have a right to make up their own minds in personal matters ... but this party also believes that we ought to significantly reduce the number of abortions in this country."
Given the latter, I asked how he could square Barack Obama's and the Democratic party's support for public funding for abortion--which studies show significantly increases the abortion rate.
Dean responded: "Total nonsense. It's total nonsense that public funding" increases the abortion rate.
Well, according to the Guttmacher Institute, that's not total nonsense.
A 1994-1995 AGI survey of abortion patients found that in states where Medicaid pays for abortions, women covered by Medicaid have an abortion rate 3.9 times that of women who are not covered, while in states that do not permit Medicaid funding for abortions, Medicaid recipients are only 1.6 times as likely as nonrecipients to have abortions....(more)