Nadine Dorries: unbelievable

This entry was posted on
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
at
1:56 pm and is filed
under Christ….

Dawn Primarolo: “The hon. Lady has asserted many things to be facts that are not.”

Mrs. Dorries: “If the Minister feels that I have said anything tonight – cited any statistic or piece of information – that is not factual, I hope that she will challenge it.”

Ooh! Ooh! Me first, please!

One thing that caught my eye last night was the number of Tories using data from a poll conducted on behalf of the Christian Institute. I found the raw data this morning and I’d like to share something special with you.

ComRes conducted this poll “on behalf of the Christian Institute on the public’s views of abortion” from a sample of 1014 people. In my view, things like (a) the size of the sample (b) the wording of the questions and (c) the interpretation and presentation of the data are all worthy of comment, but let’s keep things tidy for now and watch what happens to the numbers after they leave the hands of ComRes…

ComRes – Abortion Survey : CATI Fieldwork : 2nd-4th May 2008

… and are then released by the Christian Institute with these two key claims:

– Three in four women (73 per cent) think the abortion limit should be reduced to 20 weeks or lower to be more in line with EU countries.

– 72 per cent of women (and more than half of the general public) also want a lower abortion time limit in light of the survival rates of babies born before 24 weeks

… and are then used by a series of Conservative MPs in what Iain Dale hails(!) as a “set piece debate” in the House…

Edward Leigh uses the data, as does Mark Pritchard (who cleverly presents it as the specific will of his constituents) but the whopper belongs to Nadine Dorries, who stepped from the world of reality to a land of wishful thinking a long, long time ago…

Nadine Dorries:”The public have been informed by the images of how a foetus develops, the knowledge that foetuses feel pain in the uterus earlier, the knowledge of what happens in a late termination, the fact that doctors do not want to perform abortions and the fact that they are not performed in the NHS but in private clinics, and they have taken a view. Their view is that they do not want any further late terminations at 24 weeks. The public do not say that they want the limit to come down from 24 weeks; the public – including three quarters of women – say that they want 20 weeks. They specify what they want.

[emphasis mine]

Do they really?

Well, in a word… no.

First, you have to know where this comes from:

– Three in four women (73 per cent) think the abortion limit should be reduced to 20 weeks or lower to be more in line with EU countries.

[emphasis mine]

The Christian Institute arrived at the above figure/claim by taking the options in the red area below that fit the criteria for “20 weeks or lower” (note that this includes an outright ban on abortion) and adding the corresponding figures (circled in red) to arrive at a total of 73% in support of 20 weeks… or lower.

poll grab

But Nadine claimed the support of three quarters of all women on 20 weeks specifically, and made quite a thing of their making that as an informed choice

But if Nadine is to rely on the poll data, the best she can say for sure is that only 15% (less than a quarter) of all women back the option of a reduction to 20 weeks specifically… and only when it is spoon fed to them.

I’m sorry, but the notion that the public has seen the light and embraced Nadine’s wisdom is a fantasy.

Unless she knowingly mislead the House in her speech, Nadine Dorries is a delusional nitwit prone to belief in her own hype and publicity.

She’s still out there right now telling the world that she lost because Parliament failed and is out of touch with the will of the people (and by that she means her people).

I think some time need to be spent looking closely at this poll and how it was used in an effort to fool the people, but for now spare a moment for Nadine Dorries and the tragic extent to which she is still fooling herself.

She needs to spend some time away from people who believe more than they think and ‘know’ more than they can prove.

RELATED BLOGGAGE:
Septicisle – It was Dorries wot lost it! (now also drawing comments at Liberal Conspiracy)
NHS Blog Doctor – Nadine Dorries loses the abortion debate
Ministry of Truth – Fallout Boy #1
Sunny Hundal – Fundamentally flawed
Liberal Conspiracy – How MPs voted on abortion, and other points
Vraie fiction – Fundamentalism as a cancer
Anorak – Christian Fundamentalists Aborted: Nadine Dorries Tagged
Ministry of Turth – Fallout Boy #2 – The Mad Nad Special (Unity fisks Nadine’s ‘contribution’ to the debate… grab a coffee and dig in)
Septicisle – The final words on Dorries (for now)
Vraie fiction – A letter to Mrs. Dorries (<------ You'll probably wish that you wrote this. I wish that Nadine would admit to receiving it and many emails like it.)








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