This rewrite deals straightforwardly with the problems experienced in writing the first draft, and for that reason alone is valuable. It would be useful, I think, to give the reader a little more information about how one does do this sort of research as a law student, including how to use the help provided by reference librarians or other collaborators, rather than stopping with the "I've been mistrained to use Google as my basic research tool and I don't have the necessary statistical skills" observation. That we need a "social cognition for lawyers" course offering at the beginning of law school, teaching students how to find out what law's real consequences are instead of just searching for cases, seems to follow naturally from the basic realistic bent of law school since Holmes, but of course we don't. A look back at the curriculum reform effort of 1988 will show we considered, and rejected, this very important measure.

On the substantive front, I remain less than fully convinced by the argument that more research into actual outcomes will improve policy-making. Here a larger dose of Thurman Arnold seems to me indicated. There are those for whom anything that might reduce the frequency of abortions should be done, because every abortion is the murder of an unborn child, and nothing weighs more heavily than saving the life of the "baby." There are those for whom restrictions on access to abortion represent the conscription of women's bodies and women's choices by a state uncommitted to the women's freedom, under the impulsion of unconstitutional religious influences. These are deontological arguments, not consequentialist ones, more or less completely unaffected by evidence as to the effect of specific regulations. Then there are those, elected officials mostly but not exclusively, who don't actually care at all whether strangers have abortions or are prevented from having abortions—secure in the knowledge that their own wives, daughters, and sisters will be able to get whatever care they need—and who hope to benefit personally by gaining power through adherence to one or another of the positions taken by citizens who care. These people also don't respond to evidence about the effect of restrictions. They respond to evidence about the organizational effect of their pro-choice or anti-abortion rhetoric. So where is the actual demand for this information about the realistic consequences of abortion restrictions?