I need a "headdesk" icon

[firecat]

I support and donate to Planned Parenthood and belong to their action network. I think attacks on women's reproductive rights are heinous, and it's obvious they are on the rise. I'm sure the PP staff is heavily overworked.

But I was really pretty dismayed to receive an action email that started as follows:

Birth control. It's used by 98 percent of American women.

Um, including the more than 12% of US women who are over 65?

The rest of the statistics in the email are rendered unreliable by that mistake.

I'm not fond of the use of statistics to fight battles over civil rights anyway. But gee. If you don't want to say "sexually active," then find some other way to start your email.

ETA:
PP replied to my email explaining "That's over their lifetime (not all women at this moment)".

Comments

[moominmuppet.livejournal.com]

*headdesk* Drives me so much more nuts when it's my team playing the bad stats game... It's just embarrassing.

I'm totally in agreement with you.

[weirdodragoncat.livejournal.com]

Doh!

You're welcome to grab my *facepalm* icon if you like.

[clawbug.livejournal.com]

Sorry..... :-S

[queensheba.livejournal.com]

That's a really good point. Working in science, I'm trained to question and think critically about statistics, so I tend to question them - but a lot of the general public isn't conditioned to think that way, I think. They just think "oooh, statistics!".

[jenk]

You're welcome to the Kirk icon....

[nitoda]

Try "women of child-bearing age" in there somewhere, but that doesn't exclude all the nuns or other celibate women ...

[firecat]

It would be better than what they have.

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

Hm... I would suspect that that's a "used by 98% of American women at some point in their lives", rather than "98% of sexually active women right now". Because 98% of sexually active women sounds really high to me.

[firecat]

I agree; there's no way that only 2% of American women have any interest in getting pregnant.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

Sorry didn't see this. Yeah, I bet a group edit accidentally deleted this.

Headdesk icon?

[sistercoyote.livejournal.com]

Feel free to gank this one, if you'd like.

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

One thing that distresses me is that often birth control and pregnancy statistics are only given for women 15-45. Uh, what about the fact that the median age of menarche is 12, and that of menopause is 51?

I could see leaving out the younger kids in the statistics for birth control reliability, although not for pregnancy since some of them do encounter child molestors and such and end up pregnant. But what about us older folks? Many of us over 45 haven't been through menopause and have male partners who haven't had vasectomies. We still need birth control. What about us?