Counting counts…….
My colleagues this week have been adressing Hurricane Katrina; with our daily television and political discourse dominated by this sole topic for nearly two weeks, it has worn upon the hearts and minds of the American public to a degree that a moment’s attention elsewhere may prove to be a brief respite from the incessant crisis mentality that grips the media. Whilst the Katrina catastrophe dominates the present day, I shall address something broader in scope, with more philisopical, American historical, and ideologically potential consequence than a single tragic natural disaster.
I can already hear the first cries of protest regarding the ‘callous’ treatment of the topic of Katrina. ‘Ten thousand people might be dead! How can one ignore the topic?’
45,951,133 – the number of abortions in the United States since the decision of Roe v. Wade through the end of calendar year 2004 per Planned Parenthood’s own Alan Guttmacher Institute for Statistics . This falls in line within a few hundred thousand of the CDC’s estimates — estimates that are incomplete due to a lack of several states sending the information to the CDC since the late 90s.
Using the modest numbers of Planned Parenthood, there is an abortion every 24 seconds in America; 3,600 pregnancies are terminated daily. The proportion of abortions to live births in the United States currently sits at slightly worse than 1:4.25 (306 per 1,000 live births).
Take a moment to ponder the depths of these numbers. Since Roe Americans have aborted more babies than the combined total living populations of Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Ireland, Slovenia, and Israel combined. As a silent epidemic, Abortion has killed twice as many people in the US alone, as the AIDS epidemic has killed globally.
Whilst I personally oppose abortion, I have difficulty understanding why the modern Democratic party embraces it– by its own arguements, it is digging an electoral grave for itself as certain as those it certifies as being ‘the consequence of privacy rights’ for the masses of tissue it refuses to recognize as Life. The logical consequence of the current policies endorsed by the Democratic party is that they kill Democrats own voters in-utero — and in such numbers as to have significant electoral consequences.
At face value, this may seem far-fetched– but let us examine the total number of aborted voters who would have been eligible to vote in the 2004 Presidential elections, the predicative indicators of individual voting behavior, and the affect those measurements would have had in the last presidential election.
Since good documentation by abortion rights advocates exists as far back as Roe , this columnist will concede their numbers as the official measuring stick of Abortions in America. Given the 26th Amendment, only considering the offical abortion statistics for those whom would be over 18 years of age as of 2004 could be brought to bear on past electoral results, though the trends will continue to show in future elections.
As a predicting factor of voting behavior, the single greatest influence upon an individual’s electoral politics
is the ideological environment within which they were raised. Parental voting behaviors and political attitudes hold an undeniable statistical correlation with the voting behaviors of their children, on the magnitude of being the single best predictive factor that explains the voting behavior of an individual. When paired with the arguements that abortion ‘protects’ people from having to raise their children in poverty, the case against Abortion among Democrats should become even more compelling.
The first question to ask is obviously ‘How do illegal abortions prior to Roe compare to legal abortions thereafter?’ -taking the numbers of the highest documented Pre-Roe measurements, 210,000 illegal abortions occured in 1961 — further supposing that number under-reports on the magnitude of 40%, and that 1961’s data is a baseline, rather than the highest documented total, about 325,000 abortions a year would be the ‘baseline’ norm pre-Roe. Keep in mind these are generous terms given to the Abortion camp; abortions were often couched in other terms, or designated as mental health procedures or eugenics enforcement in those areas where eugenics laws were still in place. NOW makes a claim of somewhere between 200,000- 1,000,000 abortions a year prior to Roe, with little fluctuation in yearly rates, it offers only anecdotal evidence, without cohesive statistical evidence or arguement. Indeed, if NOW were to be correct at its upper end of estimates, abortions as a whole suffered a steep 40% decline immediately after being legalized . For the sake of arguement, we will take the middle course — that NOW’s low end aught to be given some padding, but only to a point whereit would seem logical in terms of the progression and growth of abortion numbers after Roe. Keep also in mind, that hard numbers do exist for Pre-Roe abortions in those states where abortion was legal prior to Roe. This yields an estimated 35,000,000 additional abortions over the pre-Roe levels. Take in mind these numbers are not precise, but reasonably drawn conclusions based on the available data.
Since we’ve established a reasonable basis for the increase overall of abortions since legalization –as indeed many on the Left trumpet this as a success— the next question is what the impact of these abortions has been in electoral politics. All 35,000,000 citizens are unlikely to have participated at a higher rate than others, so presuming ‘normal’ electoral activity perhaps 17-20 million were actually potential voters. Certainly some of them would have rejected their parent’s politics, would have grown up to embrace philosophies different than their home environments, but statistically speaking, that number would be small compared to the obviously pro-choice attitudes of their would-be-parents.
In a population with 121,100,00 est. presidential election voters in 2004, that number represents an increase of 14-17% in the number of voters reflecting attitudes generally inconsistent with the staunchly anti-abortion stance of the Republican party. It is ceeded that only about 5,300,000 would have been eligible to vote in 2004, but the long term demographic trend will make the impact grow with every successive election. Not only would these voters have an impact, but the non-voters would as well, due to abortion distribution by state– even non-voters are counted in the U.S. Census to determine the allocation of Electoral Votes
Those states with the lowest per capita rates of abortion since Roe are all solidly Red. They are growing in terms of electoral importance as their population changes pull additional electoral votes to their states (Arizona +4, Georgia +3, North Carolina +2, Texas +8, Florida +10, since 1972) .
The states with the highest rates of abortion since Roe? Illinois -5, New York -10, Ohio -5, Michigan -4, Pennsylvania -6, and Massachusetts -2 electoral votes. All traditionally Democratic states. Even assuming that those aborted in Red States would reflect the political dispositions of Red-State politics rather than that of their parents [thus dividing aborted voters slightly more evenly among parties], abortion remains an electoral disaster for the Democratic party. Given the collected data on the raw numbers of abortions in the states seeing significant loss in electoral pull since 1972 and the subsequent recalculation of electoral allotment which living voters would have resulted, the six afformentioned Blue states would have seen a much more modest loss of -1 electoral vote total– and a subsequent trigger for more modest gains among the afformentioned Red States of +18.
Think for a few minutes as to the margins in the past two presidential elections. What would a 35 electoral vote swing have meant for Al Gore? For John Kerry?
While it may be easy to dismiss this as idle speculation regarding the final outcomes of electoral populations, there is at least compelling anecdotal and statistical evidence to suggest these are statistically significant and meaningful trends. As the surviving generations of the Roe become even more statistically affected by the compounding rates and affects of abortion, it is an ill-trend for those parties that endorse a Pro-choice stance. Like it or not, some political actions reverberate down the generations, to affect those whom made them.
The simple weight of demographics show that abortion has hurt the Democratic party right where it hurts most — at the polls.