Contraception does not reduce Abortion

For those who think contraception reduces abortion, Robert Novak points out that the claim does not ring true:

The widely publicized claim by Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton that state-funded contraception aid cuts down abortion as prevention of unwanted pregnancies is contradicted by figures from the same abortion think tank the senators relied on for an April 18 op-ed in the Albany, N.Y., Times Union.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute reports that California spends more than three times as much on contraception as South Dakota for each woman who requests such services. However, California's rate of abortion per one thousand women is 31.2 percent, nearly six times as high as South Dakota's 5.5 percent.

Reid and Clinton chided South Dakota for passing an anti-abortion law while being "one of the most difficult states" for low-income women to get contraceptive devices, which the senators claim drives up abortion.

I would be interested in seeing other similiar correlations. I would guess they are there.

UPDATE: The USCCB comments on this:

The authors also claim that widespread access to contraception clearly leads to lower abortion rates,” Ms. McQuade noted. “Yet Guttmacher’s own data show there is no correlation between the two. States ranking highest for access to contraceptive services, including California and New York, also rank highest in abortion rates. Others that Guttmacher considers weak in contraceptive services, such as Kansas and the Dakotas, have among the lowest abortion rates in the country.”

“Those states have reduced their abortion rates, in part, by choosing not to subsidize abortion, and ensuring informed consent for women and parental involvement for minors seeking abortions – policies which the Guttmacher report demands be rescinded,” she explained.