As I reported on Friday afternoon, Republican state senator Brad Benson (Spokane) told a group of supporters that Planned Parenthood intentionally sells condoms that have an 80% failure rate because they have “an interest in the follow-up product.”

I called Benson’s office this morning to find out what Benson was talking about. Planned Parenthood told me his claim was “poppycock.” A Benson staffer told me he would call me back. Benson, who became a state senator in 2004 after 8 years as a state rep, is facing a stiff challenge from Democratic candidate, Chris Marr, former chair of the Spokane Chamber of Commerce.

A Slog commenter pointed out that ConsumerReports did a study of 23 condoms, rating them on “reliability” and “Strength.” Planned Parenthood had 3 condoms on the list. One of those, Planned Parenthood’s Lollipop condom, scored “excellent” on reliability and “very good” on strength. However, the two other Planned Parenthood condoms, Assorted Colors & Honeydew, didn’t do well. While Assorted Colors got “excellent” on reliability, it got “poor” on strength. Honeydew scored “poor” in both categories.

So maybe Benson was riffing off Planned Parenthood’s Honeydew condoms. I don’t know. However, there’s nothing in the ConsumerReports study about an 80% failure rate. ConsumerReports website says the worst condoms, which would be the Honeydew condoms, broke at 25 liters of air “strength threshold” 18 out of 120 times. That’s a 15% failure rate…not 80%. In fact, worst case scenario, Planned Parenthood condoms have an 85% success rate.

Meanwhile, as the ConsumerReports study shows, Planned Parenthood’s Lollipop condoms got the top two scores on strength and reliability—which seems to upend Benson’s conspiracy theory that Planned Parenthood is promoting unwanted pregnancies.

Anyway, hopefully we’ll see what Benson says.