I was surprised to see him making such lame arguments–although it’s possible that the story didn’t capture them well. Surely he realizes that differences in infant mortality rates among places reflects more than differences in state health-care spending. Beinart doesn’t seem to be making any allowances for state income levels. And the data on increased abortion rates under Bush is very dodgy. Maybe we’ll get better data that shows this claim to have been true, but there’s no good reason to believe it today.