2007 FactCheck: on Families & Children

Mitt Romney: FactCheck: Teenage birth rate declined from 1991 to 2005

Sam Brownback: FactCheck:No 80% illegitimacy in countries with gay marriage

This sentence has so many problems it’s hard to know where to begin. We confirmed that two Norwegian counties, Nordland and Nord-Troendelag, have an out-of-wedlock birthrate in excess of 80%. But Norway doesn’t have legalized gay marriage, so Brownback’s use of Norwegian statistics to argue his point is illogical and misleading.

The Netherlands and Belgium are the only Northern European countries that do, enacted in 2001 and 2003, respectively. The Netherlands’ rate of out-of-wedlock births is much higher than it was a decade ago, but in 2005 the rate was only about 35%. In Belgium, unmarried birth rates have been climbing since the mid-1970s.

Barack Obama: FactCheck: ‘Sex Ed for Kindergarten’ means ‘age-appropriate’

For several days now, Obama has been dealing with a flap over comments he made to a Planned Parenthood gathering last week. He said that he had once been attacked for advocating “teaching sex education to kindergarteners” as a state senator. And he added, “It’s the right thing to do...to provide age-appropriate sex education, science-based sex education in schools.”

Although video of that statement shows Obama stressed the term “age-appropriate,” a news headline read, “Sex Ed for Kindergarteners ‘Right Thing to Do,’ Says Obama.” Romney seized on the headline and slammed Obama, saying, “Obama is wrong if he thinks science-based sex education has any place in kindergarten.”

The Obama campaign later pointed to a 2004 story in which Obama said he “does not support teaching explicit sex education to children in kindergarten.”