That Wall Street Journal op-ed that Ed Whelan mentioned here yesterday is seriously undercooked. Ed has already mentioned that David Gibson, the author, misstated McCain’s position on stem-cell research, and poked some holes in his argument. I agree with Ed on every point.

A few more problems. Gibson writes, “Democrats have been embracing a more effective strategy [for reducing the incidence of abortion] than the GOP.” You might expect him to try to refute the evidence that the modest pro-life policies that Republicans tend to support and Democrats to oppose have reduced the incidence of abortion. He doesn’t. Nor does he, at any point, mention how the Democrats’, and Obama’s, official support for taxpayer funding of abortion fits into this “strategy”—even though the only study he cites about the effectiveness of the “Democratic strategy” itself notes that taxpayer funding is associated with increases in the abortion rate. He doesn’t mention that either.