“Did you know that abortions have gone up 25% since George Bush was president?”

No, and neither did the rest of the people who breathe the earth’s oxygen, but wherever Howard Dean lives, it’s apparently hard data.

Except that it’s not, and in that regard, we owe The Great Screamer a debt of gratitude. Not only did he help clarify the whole argument about which party Christians could find a home in, but he may actually help put a completely false bit of information to rest, simply because he couldn’t leave a little white lie alone and had to go for A Super-Sized Mogombo Lie with cheese on it.

The little lie is that there were more abortions under Bush’s presidency than under Clinton’s. You’ve heard it? So have I. But it turns out to be wrong. According to a scrapbook item in last week’s Weekly Standard, FactCheck.org — who, just for the record, is just as happy skewering Dick Cheney as Harry Reid — released this article about the misinformation. It’s worth the read, but to summarize, some questionable methods were used in an October, 2004 article to arrive at a figure of 52,000 more abortions under Bush. It’s no wonder that this was exactly what the doctor ordered for John Kerry and that it has continued to be popular with the likes of Hillary Clinton. But, good grief, even they knew to play it safe and not try to gild the lily. Even if that 52,000 number were accurate, it would only represent a 4% increase, not Dean’s 25%. (Yes, Mr. Dean, American women do get that many abortions.)

And just to be clear, abortions went down under George W. Bush by 0.8% in 2001 and 0.8% in 2002. The abortion rate (which is the number of women having abortions relative to the total population) also decreased 1% in 2001 and 0.9% in 2002.

Stick that in your pipe and scream at it, Loud Howard.