The "Roe Effect"...

For some time now, James Taranto has been discussing a theory that he calls the Roe Effect in his Best of the Web column. Today he fleshes out a fascinating summary of this concept in OpinionJournal.com.

Since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, America has become polarized in its support or opposition to laws that would regulate abortion and Democrats and Republicans have staked out one side of the issue or the other in their platforms. Republicans, however - in practice - have the advantage in the debate. While the party generally favors some simple regulations (most of which the majority of the population is in favor of), the Democrats are forced to defend an all-or-nothing position that allows such unpopular practices as partial-birth abortions, no parental consent and taxpayer-funded abortion.

But more to the point, one major effect of Roe over the years has been to thin out the potential pool of Democrat voters. Taranto explains:

It is a statement of fact, not a moral judgment, to observe that every pregnancy aborted today results in one fewer eligible voter 18 years from now. More than 40 million legal abortions have occurred in the United States since 1973, and these are not randomly distributed across the population. Black women, for example, have a higher abortion ratio (percentage of pregnancies aborted) than Hispanic women, whose abortion ratio in turn is higher than that of non-Hispanic whites. Since blacks vote Democratic in far greater proportions than Hispanics, and whites are more Republican than Hispanics or blacks, ethnic disparities in abortion ratios would be sufficient to give the GOP a significant boost--surely enough to account for George W. Bush's razor-thin Florida victory in 2000.

The Roe effect, however, refers specifically to the nexus between the practice of abortion and the politics of abortion. It seems self-evident that pro-choice women are more likely to have abortions than pro-life ones, and common sense suggests that children tend to gravitate toward their parents' values. This would seem to ensure that Americans born after Roe v. Wade have a greater propensity to vote for the pro-life party--that is, Republican--than they otherwise would have.

And the effect is compounded over time as children who are not born do not, in turn, have their own children and grandchildren and so on. Of course, the irony is that should Roe be overturned and the jurisdiction of abortion laws be returned to the States, the political positions of the two parties would be reversed - with the Republicans defending a more absolutist position to the Democrats fighting for limited legalization in certain States.

Posted by: Gary at 09:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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