Almost daily Corner bashing

I'd imagine that one of the most fun things about being a conservative pundit is having carte blanche to use numbers (or other forms of misdirection) to sneak lies past your readers. And to do so not just with impunity, but no doubt also with the fawning approval of colleagues and editors. Here's today's installment, again from Ramesh Ponnuru:

As in past Congresses, the act includes the ludicrous "finding" that "Prior to the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, an estimated 1,200,000 women each year were forced to resort to illegal abortions. . ." This claim, a favorite of Boxer, is based on dubious studies and makes no sense. There were 900,000 abortions in 1974 and 1 million in 1975. Are we really supposed to believe that the nationwide legalization of abortion caused the number of abortions to drop?

The 1.2 million abortions claim is a nationwide estimate culled from statewide estimates. Ramesh calls the studies dubious. I call them about as good as you could get given the issue. But even if the number is off by 500,000, which it most certainly is not, 700,000 is 700,000 too many.

Of course, 1.2 million may very well be right on the money. The assumption that Ramesh is foisting upon his readers--an assumption that he knows is false--is that the instant Roe was decided, every woman who wanted an abortion got one from a doctor at a certified clinic, hospital, or office. The number of abortions certainly didn't drop by 300,000. It's just that it took more than a handful of months for women to learn the law, to know where to go, to  to feel safe, and for the culture to change. All these statistics imply is that, in the months after Roe, significant numbers of women were still cowed into self-aborting by decades of having to resort to those methods by dint of law.

Of course, his point here is not to argue against Barbara Boxer's legislation on the merits, but to make her--and Democrats generally--look like liars. And, not surprisingly, in order to accomplish that, he has to resort to obscurantism and outright deceit.