HHS Mandate – 99%?

This is a series of short talking points that we have provided to our volunteers as information they can use in speaking out in various ways against the ObamaCare mandate on contraception. Feel free to use, build on, or share.

What about the 99% number that the President used during his news conference? If nearly all women are using contraception, it must be OK.

That many women are not using contraception.  There have been numerous rebuttals about the unreliability of this statistic.

Here is the direct quote from the abstract of the report: “More than 99% of women 15-44 years of age who have ever had sexual intercourse with a male (referred to as “sexually experienced women”) have used at least one contraceptive method.”

Yes, NFP was included here as a contraceptive method by the CDC.  And, yes, the president said that 99% of all women have used contraceptives. But in fact, the report did not include those women who are not “sexually experienced,” were postpartum, or not using anything for birth control. And yet it did include every woman who has ever used a hormonal contraception for any reason (i.e., if you took hormones at 16 for irregularity for a couple of years and never again, you were included).

One can always find some number or statistic to support one’s point of view.  This issue is fundamentally about a principle: Will this country for the first time in its history force people to abandon their deeply held religious beliefs and be forced to pay for drugs and services that directly contradict their beliefs?

So the 99% number is not the actual percentage of women who currently use hormonal contraception to prevent pregnancy, but rather, is a cumulative number?

Yep!