On The Corner, Ramesh Ponnuru counters two myths that former New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse continues to spread about Roe v. Wade—namely, (1) that abortion supposedly was not a crime at the nation’s founding, and (2) that “as many as two million illegal abortions a year” (in the reporter’s paraphrase) occurred in this country just before Roe.

Greenhouse made her comments in a speech at Radcliffe—the same venue, incidentally, as her notorious rant four years ago that resulted in her first public scolding from NYT’s public editor. One might have hoped that a Radcliffe audience would have been sharp enough to question the implicit proposition that Roe somehow led to an immediate sharp reduction in the number of abortions. But it’s a safe bet that most of the audience had its ideological blinders on.