Another false meme that needs to be stopped

This morning on "Meet the Press", John F. Kerry made the assertion that the number of abortions declined during the Clinton years and increased during the Bush years. Here's the quote:

And do you know that in fact abortion has gone up in these last few years with the draconian policies that Republicans have where they talk about it, but they do nothing to find this kind of place of discussion. And under President Clinton, abortion went down because we did have adequate family planning services, because we talked about counseling, adoption and other kinds of things.

He's repeating -- and embellishing ("draconian?") -- the claim that Hillary made last week when speaking to a group of pro-abortion advocates (h/t Michelle Malkin).

Oh, yes, and Kerry also made it unintelligible: "but they do nothing to find this kind of place of discussion". Huh?

Anyway, both Kerry and Hillary are getting their talking points straight from an article written by the supposedly "consistently prolife" Glen Harold Stassen, published last fall (conveniently just before the election), which claimed that abortions increased during President Bush's first term. (Unfortunately, the links to Stassen's original article are dead, but I did find a lengthy post from Stassen on this blog.)

Stassen said Clinton's economic policies were better than Bush's, which led to a decrease in abortions, and the worsening Bush economy caused an increase in abortions. Therefore, he argued, pro-lifers ought to consider voting for Kerry, because he, like Clinton, would have better economic policies that would lead to fewer abortions.

Tortured logic, based on false, or, at best, dubious claims.

It turns out that there wasn't a huge increase in the number of abortions after Bush was elected, Stassen isn't a staunch pro-life advocate, and the decrease in abortions during the '90's most likely was because of pro-life laws enacted in state legislatures, not because of the economy.

And let's not even discuss the claim that Clinton's economic policies were better than Bush's; we'll put that in the "dubious at best" category to save space here.

The National Right to Life Committee has all the factual rebuttal one needs to stop this abortion meme dead in its tracks, here (or here for more links).

The Heritage Foundation has a different study, which comes to the same conclusions, here, and more here from CatholicExchange.com.

As Just one Minute said back in November, "let's see if we can terminate this meme".

We haven't yet, and we need to do something fast to squash it, because it's already grown far too strong.

It's clear now that this meme is being used in a concerted way by liberal Democrats as they try to reposition themselves on the abortion issue.

This must be stopped. Roe v. Wade was based on a lie; we absolutely cannot let another lie shape the course of the discussion over the next four years.

UPDATE, 2/8: Welcome, Just One Minute readers! And no, I'm not dating Philip Michael Thomas (though one of those many first names acually is my husband's first name), and yes, I do have a last hame. I could tell you, but then I'd have to... oh never mind.