Leaving aside her clainm to geekiness and overuse of Powerpoint, Darcy may have a problem with math.
I heard her say that 1/3 of women have had an abortion.
Over at HorsesAss, Roya spews:
1) If I remember correctly, (Darcy) said that 1/3 of women have had an abortion, from the studies I’ve seen, that’s an accurate statement.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/blogs/the-human-condition/2010/03/04/about-40-percent-of-american-women-have-had-abortions-the-math-behind-the-stat.html
Hmmm … seems as if Darcy may he been too busy with economics and comp sci at Harvard to learn some basic math. The actual number in their source was even weirder … 40%!!!
Here, from the Daily Beast,</a> is the source for her statement:<em>
I started with this statistic from the Guttmacher Institute, a think tank that ….. supports abortion rights: “From 1973 through 2005, more than 45 million legal abortions occurred.” ….. the United States population was 295,753,151 in 2005 which counted abortions only through 2005). That population is 50.7 percent (150 million people) female. Subtract the 24.3 percent of the population that is under 18 and you’re down to 113.6 million women. Forty-five million is 39.6 percent of that, or, as I wrote it, “about 40 percent.”
Since Neil and Darryl, numbers guys at HA, are both better at math than I, maybe one of them will explain the obvious errors in the math. Here are some of the most obvious … the math does not account for the number of women who have multiple abortions, it assumes that women under 18 have no abortions, and it assumes that one can divide an integral over 30 years by the number of women of birthing age in one year.
If I do the math, the number comes out around 10%.