Over at Commonweal, Matthew Boudway is so indignant over a post of mine that he can’t even type straight. (The name’s Ponnuru, by the way.) Four quick points: 1) You don’t have to offer an argument when all you’re doing is endorsing someone else’s. 2) I don’t see why we should credit the claim of an association of community health centers that not one of its members has ever performed an abortion absent some explanation of how it purports to know this alleged fact. 3) Even if the fact is stipulated it tells us nothing about how some of the CHCs will in the future respond to some activists’ concerted efforts, already underway, to get them to offer abortions. 4) I argued that most pro-lifers were going to trust the National Right to Life Committee rather than, say, Commonweal on these issues and that this fact would have political implications. Boudway calls this passage “a textbook example of the ad hominem argument.” Not if the textbook has an editor.