Why the Left is Dying
By Hans Zeiger

The National Abortion Rights Action League's youth coalition, Generation Pro-Choice, dispatched an email recently with the headline "Rumors of Gen Pro-Choicers demise are greatly exaggerated." Interestingly, it didn't say that the "rumors" were false, only that they were exaggerated. It is increasingly clear to NARAL, though subtly expressed, that the demise of the Left is imminent.

I am convinced that the political strength of conservatives, so evident in the gains of the 2004 election, is a reflection of a more permanent conservative impulse that runs deeply in the American character. But conservatism is not the chief threat to liberalism; the Left is its own worst enemy.

NARAL's "Generation Pro-Choice" is dying because liberals are birthing fewer children. James Pinkerton recently contended in Newsday that "the left has birth-controlled, aborted and maybe also gay-libbed itself into a smaller role in American society." Overall, the fertitlity rate in Kerry states is around 12 percent lower than in Bush states. The Economist reports that in the ultra-liberal state of Vermont, the annual fertility rate is 49 children for every 1,000 women of child-bearing age. But in the heavily pro-Bush state of Utah, nearly twice as many children per 1,000 child-bearing-aged women are being born. Of every 1,000 Utah women, 91 children are born.

Among liberal constituencies, homosexual couples are certainly not having children. Despite the rapidity and effectiveness with which the homosexual movement advances in politics and culture, homosexuals simply don't reproduce.

Abortion has much more to do with the fertility rates amongst liberals. Of the twenty states with the lowest abortion rates according to the Centers for Disease Control, only Maryland, Maine, and Wisconsin voted for Kerry. Of the ten states with the highest abortion rates, only Florida, Kansas, and Virginia voted for Bush.

States that voted most overwhelmingly for Kerry tend to be ranked among the highest abortion rates. Kerry's most impressive lead over Bush was in the Distict of Columbia where he scored 90 percent. The District also has the nation's highest annual abortion rate at 46 abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age. Of the nine states with the lowest abortion rates - Idaho, Colorado, Kentucky, South Dakota, Mississippi, West Virginia, Utah, Missouri, and South Carolina - the average winning percentage for Bush was nearly 60 percent. Similar trends were projected by Planned Parenthood's think tank, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, after the 2000 election.

According to the Census Bureau, the 2004 Voting Age Population was 217.8 million. Since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, over 40 million documented abortions have occurred. And of those aborted Americans, 18,336,576 would have been at least 18-years old on November 2. John Kerry lost the popular vote by only 3,461,992 ballots. Kerry could have used another 18 million votes - five times his margin of defeat. That isn't to say that all 18 million citizens would have voted for Kerry, or voted at all, but given the power of parental influence the chances are likely that these aborted Americans would have been a major Democrat constituency.

What's more troubling for Democrats is that by 2008, the deficit in their Voting Age Population will have risen to 24,408,960 - those who were aborted between 1973 and 1990. "Liberals have been remarkably blind to the fact that every day the abortions they advocate dramatically decrease their power to do so," writes Larry Eastland in the American Spectator.

Wirthlin polling conducted a recent study of 2,000 Americans to determine political connections to abortion. Democrats reported having a close relationship with someone who had an abortion at 49.37 percent, while only 35 percent of Republicans said that they were close to someone who had an abortion. Projecting these percentages onto the total numbers of abortion since 1973, Eastland found that there are 19.7 million missing Democrats and 13.9 million missing Republicans. Democrats are at a disadvantage by 5.84 million missing voters.

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal has referred to these trends as the Roe Effect. "Abortion is making America more conservative than it otherwise would be," writes Taranto. First, "liberal and Democratic women are more likely to have abortions." Second, "children's political views tend to reflect those of their parents - not exactly, of course, and not in every case, but on average. Thus abortion depletes the next generation of liberals and eventually makes the population more conservative."

Liberal author Philip Longman concludes in a recent Washington Post article that the "empty cradle" is a result of evolutionary natural selection. "When secular-minded Americans decide to have few, if any, children, they unwittingly give a strong evolutionary advantage to the other side of the culture divide."

To suggest that abortion has a very real impact on cultural trends is neither evolutionary nor, from a conservative point of view, worthy of celebration. The murder of a human being is equally wrong whether he or she is born to a liberal or to a conservative, to an anarchist or to a communist. And the survival of certain individuals over others says nothing about the comparative worth of one person over another. The abortion of one child does not indicate that his genes were less favorable than his peer's. America is built on the principle of equality: that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That principle is not predicated on the biological evolution of the human species. Quite to the contrary, it is founded on the belief that God has made every soul in His image.

The rejection of that most fundamental truth, the founding principle of America, is the death wish of the American Left. Liberals have not only failed to reproduce, they are quite literally killing themselves.

Hans Zeiger is president of the Scout Honor Coalition, spokesman for the Scouting Legal Defense Fund, and a student at Hillsdale College. www.hanszeiger.com

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