Or so goes the logic of some conservatives who suggest the decline of today’s left is directly attributable to Roe V. Wade. By winning that lawsuit, the political left aborted itself out of power. This explanation does not seem so unreasonable.
If true, shouldn’t conservatives be at least a little bit apprehensive about trying to outlaw abortion? Which, according to the logic, would mean an increase of liberal babies who will become liberal voters.
Be careful of what you wish for I guess.
Howard McEwen Says:
The theory as I remember it is that younger voters vote lib. Babies aborted in 1973 started voting in the early 90s. All those lost younger voters aren’t pulling levers for the Dems. Hence, the GOP wins.
I would gladly accept electrol lossses for the end of abortion as we know it…and I’d gladly accept more crime, poverty, and single parent households. To steal a phrase from Jefferson on cutting a deal on slavery, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
nobrainer Says:
I wrote this post not really believing, nor disbelieving the argument. I felt, however, that any effect would probably be less than what the people saying it might believe. I’ve mostly just seen it in internet chatrooms/blogs, so I don’t know if it carries much weight elsewhere.
I’ve seen the number 47 million thrown out as the estimate of abortions in this country since Roe V Wade. That works out to about 1.42 million per year. Estimating that the 0.42 million would have happened despite any law, that would mean about 1 million additional births per year. If the average is steady, that means about an additional 14 million eligible voters in the mostly 18-29 year old demographic. That’s a lot of possible votes.
So I know this is a giant “what if” scenario, but it is somewhat interesting, so I’ll keep going.
Of course actual qualification and participation would be of importance. Using poll data from 2004, we can estimate a roughly 47% turnout. Assuming the vote ratio remains the same, it results in about a net gain of 583,000 votes for John Kerry. That is smaller than the margin of Bush’s victory. Although I haven’t looked at it, that number of votes could potentially affect congressional and senatorial seats and possibly even the electoral college, depending on geographic breakdown.
But for a bit more info, I pulled out The Economics of Public Issues (it’s a good read, and uber cheap for those who are at ground floor economic level), which has some abortion data pre- and post-Roe. It notes:
During 1973, slightly over 700,000 legal abortions were performed in the United States… One early study concluded that of the legal abortions that took place in the year following Roe v. Wade, “well over half–most likely between two-thirds and three-fourths… were replacements for illegal abortions.”
That references a paper by Sklar and Berkov, “Abortion, Illegitimacy, and the American Birth Rate,” published in the journal Science. These estimates seem plausible if you believe an earlier assertion that, “prior to the legalization of abortion, more than 350,000 women were admitted annually to American hospitals with complications resulting from abortions.” The number of abortions more than doubled to near 1.6 million by 1981, where it stayed until it began to decline in 1988 until 2001 down to just above 1 million per year. I think the authors were working from AGI instead of CDC numbers. The AGI numbers are consistently 12-25% greater than CDC.
I point this out to show that clearly the behavior between ’73 and ’86 was not linear. If you assume, however, that the number of illegal abortions would stay about the same, and account for the variation between 1/2 and 3/4 of the number of abortions performed in the year after Roe v. Wade, there is still not much difference. Under that scenario, John Kerry would have closed the gap with Bush by between 477,000 and 586,00 votes.
So this little exercise of mine… well I don’t think it really says all that much. Applying numbers by state might shed more light on possible political outcomes.
Evan Says:
Good work Nobrainer! I hope a think tank publishes the correlation numbers in more depth. My gut is that it’s not all that significant. I’d more likely buy the argument that all the, hypothetically, poor destitute young mothers on welfare (as a result of keeping their children) would drive more people towards the political right when they see where their taxes are going.
Let me play devils advocate a little here…
“I’d gladly accept more crime, poverty, and single parent households.” Really?! Just so I can get my bearings, would you trade an atomic detonation in, say, Denver for the repeal of Roe v. Wade? I know it’s a stupid question, but would that be worth it too?
Let’s assume that within the extra bump in crime rate there is a certain percentage of violent crimes like rape and murder. And then, of those would-be aborted people who are convicted of violent crimes, many are sentenced to death (you better not hypocritically support the death penalty if you’re pro-life). Let’s also not forget to mention the great costs in just housing criminals and processing them through the justice system. And as long as we’re talking costs, more crime and poverty inevitably reduces property values and creates a general cultural and economic malaise. Is it still worth it?
Why don’t we just castrate people and not allow people to have children unless they pass a test? That would avoid abortions and probably cost about as much as having a higher crime rate coupled with the economic deadweight of the inevitable government social programs resulting from a growth in poverty.
We can’t put a dollar sign on human life and if I keep going down this road I know I’m going to tread some really slippery slopes. So I’ll let the debate continue amongst the people who honestly think this is the biggest issue facing our country.
I do have a somewhat related and honest question…
Why do children get more consideration than adults in our culture? I guess they have more potential? You always hear, “what about the children” and “we must save the starving children” but why are children valued so much higher? There are starving adults too. Do children cross some infelction point where their worth dimishes or is it a gradual degradation of perceived value?
nobrainer Says:
To start toward the end of your last questions, I think that children do get to an inflection point, probably somewhere around the age of 18-21.
The children get a lot more attention because it’s assumed and probable that you’ll have better luck shaping the life of a young person than an old one. Thus they get extra attention. Like a dog that isn’t properly trained when it was a puppy, the kids, once older, become a major hindrance that could easily have been avoided.
And my own question, does God care more about abortion and murder rates, or just the number? I’ve always felt that the best way to avoid crime/murder/abortion/every-bad-thing-people-do is to have less people. Maybe that’s just me.
Evan Says:
So using that logic, people get more upset about abortion (than murdered adults) because those kids could have been trained, indoctrinated and proselytized whereas someone like you or me has already been trained, indoctrinated and proselytized. We hard-headed adults provide a low value target for the people looking to establish influence. Is that what you’re saying there?
Disturbing and interesting.
To draw an ironic comparison, kids would be like stem cells and adults the less flexible mature cells (if you’re into the technicalities of that debate). Ha!
Huh? How would there be more liberal babies? I think it’s much more plausible, as Freakonimics suggests, that there would more crime, less prosperity and more cash strapped single parents on welfare. Are you saying that those people would likely be more liberal? And if so, they’d be voting? This is a big stretch.
I think the political left is in decline because of a beautifully orchestrated and well funded GOP infrastructure that has put the left on the defensive. Thanks *in part* to things like Roe v. Wade that supply the GOP infrastructure with ample ammunition to appeal to the “family values” and “moral” voters.