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‘Roe Effect’ Cited as Factor in Election Outcome
While many liberal Democrats fear future Supreme Court appointments could bring an end to legalized abortion, over the long haul it might be in their own best interest, if a Southern Baptist leader is correct.

Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said on National Public Radio that abortion may have been a factor in the recent election--not abortion policy, but abortion practice.

“It is true that married people tend to be people who are socially conservative and tend to be people who vote disproportionately for George Bush and tend not to abort their children but have them,” Land said. “Democrats tend to be disproportionately single and when they are married tend to abort at higher than the national average. That means they don’t reproduce as many children in the next generation.”

Land isn’t the first to come up with the idea. It’s been around for a couple of years and even has a name: the Roe effect, an allusion to the 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing most abortions in the United States.

While Republican women also have abortions, demographics suggest that Democrats have them at a rate 30 percent higher. That means—presuming that children inherit the political leanings of their parents—Democrats have lost 6 million more potential voters than Republicans in three decades of legalized abortion.

“Do Democrats realize that millions of Missing Voters—due to the abortion policies they advocate—gave George W. Bush the margin of victory in 2000?” Larry Eastland wrote in an American Spectator column reprinted in June in the Wall Street Journal.


The idea is controversial....