A shining little moment in fact-checking

Saturday morning, imagine my surprise to read this little gem in the Austin-American Statesman:

In a tweet, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott suggested a legislated end to government aid to clinics affiliated with abortion providers including Planned Parenthood fueled fewer pregnancies and abortions.

"After Texas defunded Planned Parenthood, both the Unintended Pregnancy & Abortion Rates Dropped," Abbott wrote on Twitter Aug. 25, 2015.

"PolitiFact Texas" accordingly does its thing, and concludes that Abbott's tweet was "mostly false," because the trend toward lower teen pregnancies and fewer abortions in Texas was already in place before the new restrictions that provoked so much controversy. Fine, easy-peezy.

But isn't the headline just a little bit wrong? Wouldn't something along the lines of "Wendy Davis was wrong: Defunding Planned Parenthood and restricting abortion had no effect" be more useful?

It seems to me that if Abbott is wrong, Wendy Davis and her ilk were also wrong. While one might theoretically thread the needle to an asymmetric conclusion, that offends Occam's Razor, which offends me.

Final reminder-note to irritate everybody: I am pro-choice, but oppose government money going to abortion, so I give my own money to charities that make it possible for poor women to get them. I thought that might be relevant.

Carry on.