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Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) shows off the worst, most misleading chart in history

The Christian right's growing problem of lying about Planned Parenthood continued on Tuesday morning, as the Republican-led Congress continued their witch-hunt on the family planning organization by holding a hearing with its president, Cecile Richards.

During the hearing, Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz showed and described a chart to Ms. Richards, which was titled, "Planned Parenthood Federation of America: Abortions Up - Life-Saving Procedures Down." Before writing more about this chart, I'll allow you to look at it for yourselves:

http://www.vox.com/2015/9/29/9417845/planned-parenthood-terrible-chart

The x-axis shows the years between 2006 and 2013, while the y-axis shows the number of cancer screenings & prevention services as well as the number of abortions. As you can see, Mr. Chaffetz's chart started out fairly accurate, as it clearly showed that in 2006, cancer screenings & prevention services (2,007,371) were much more prevalent among Planned Parenthood's services than abortions (289,750). However, that was the beginning and the end as far as accuracy was concerned. The chart then fast-forwarded from 2006 to 2013, where it showed abortions, via the red line and arrow, being much more frequent than cancer screenings & prevention services (via the pink line and arrow). The problem being, in 2013, there were 327,000 abortions and 935,573 cancer screenings & prevention services. So while Mr. Chaffetz is correct that abortions have increased and cancer screenings & prevention services have decreased, Planned Parenthood still performed over 600,000 more cancer screenings & prevention services than abortions, so the chart is, as kids nowadays would call it, an epic fail. According to Representative Chaffetz, if a number increases from year 1 to year 2, it's inevitably greater than a number which decreases from year 1 to year 2. Based on that logic, expect Chaffetz to utter the following ridiculous lines in the future (if he hasn't already):

- "While my age has increased, my weight has decreased, so I'm older than I weigh."

- "There are more teams than ever in pro football, but there are fewer players as well. It's quite something that we have more teams than players now."

- "I see that the temperature in Antarctica rose today from yesterday and the temperature in the Middle East went down today from yesterday. Seriously? It's warmer in Antarctica than in the Middle East? What's going on here?"

- "Those penis enlargement pills are really working. My wife's even impressed by my size! Shaquille O'Neal, as he's getting older, seems to be shrinking. Never did I think I'd be able to say my penis is bigger than Shaquille O'Neal!"

- "How is it my shoe size grew, and based on my latest test, my IQ shrank? It's really depressing to think my shoes are a bigger number than my IQ!"

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