As I state in my biases, I am very pro-life.

My strongest bias is my respect for human life. I think the vivisection of unborn babies is barbaric and I look forward to a time when this practice rejoins slavery as a relic of the past. I take great solace that the post Baby-Boomer generations are growing more and more pro-life every year and I predict that abortion will be illegal again somewhere between 2020 and 2040.

I do not know how many of my readers share my views on this, but my abortion reference page receives many hits along with a white paper I wrote on What do the Scriptures (Jewish & Christian) say about abortion? So I am confident that this issue is of interest to many people who visit this site no matter where they stand on the issue.

The political implications of abortion are fascinating and are starting to receive more media attention.

Joel Rosenberg has an excellent article on current demographic trends, abortion, and how it may influence the 2004 election. Terry Mattingly has found some interesting figures:

It's a matter of numbers. Voter News Service found that 14 percent of 2000 voters attended religious services more than once a week. These voters backed George W. Bush by a 27-percent margin. The 14 percent of the voters who said they never attended went to Al Gore by a 29-percent margin.

This "pew gap" is not new. While trends vary among blacks and Hispanics, they noted, the religion gap among white voters in the 1992, 1996 and 2000 presidential elections was "more important than other demographic and social cleavages. ... (It) was much larger than the gender gap and more significant than any combination of differences in education, income, occupation, age, marital status and regional groupings."

Meanwhile, the fastest growing Democratic power bloc is what Bolce and De Maio called the "anti-fundamentalist" voter. In 1996 and 2000, about a third of the total white Democratic presidential vote came from these voters that identified themselves as intensely secular or religious liberals. [boldness added]

Mattingly makes some good points, but the abortion issue cannot be explained by just the gap between conservative religious folk (pro-life) and liberal religious and anti-religious people. As technological innovations allow people to see healthy babies within the womb, they realize they are not killing a lump of tissue, but a child. I believe modern science is one of the main reasons why post baby boomer generations – as a whole – find abortion to be barbaric. However, there is also some support for the religious gap theory.

Many people believe in a "Roe Effect" – a social Darwinism where liberals kill many of their offspring and social conservatives do not. Thus, there are more children raised in conservative homes and these children tend to share their parents beliefs about the sanctity of life. With over 40,000,000 US babies aborted in the US since Roe v. Wade, those are a lot of children who were not raised by liberals (over 19 million of whom would now be old enough to vote). As close as the 2000 Presidential election was, one can make a strong argument that the Democratic stance on abortion has already cost them one Presidential election. How many more losses will it take before the Democrats start reflecting the majority of Americans and become pro-life?

I am not a major fan of President Bush and I grow less enthusiastic about him with each new entitlement he endorses. However, I will not stay home on November and I will be voting for Bush because of my respect for human life. I would love a pro-life Democratic alternative. Until that day returns, they will continue to lose elections they could have won.

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