Pro-life leader says abortion movement is ‘killing itself’

Washington D.C., Sep 28, 2004 / 22:00 pm

Abortions are having a clear impact on the U.S. political landscape in more ways than the recent obvious debates and controversies surrounding pro-abortion politicians. Abortions may actually be increasing the pro-life vote over the long-term and quite literally “killing” the pro-choice movement, says a USCCB official in a comment released last week.

Cathy Cleaver Ruse, Esq., spokesperson of the Right to Life Office of the USCCB highlighted the recent observations of journalists and political analysts that aborted children also impact politics as “missing votes” for the pro-choice side.

She refers to Wall Street Journal reporter James Taranto, who has coined these missing votes as the "Roe effect."

“The Roe Effect theorizes that ‘pro-choice’ women are more likely to have abortions than pro-life women, and that children tend to espouse the views of their parents. Thus, there are fewer and fewer children growing up to become ‘pro-choice’ adults -- and this, according to the theory, has political ramifications,” explains Ruse.

Ruse cites Larry Eastland’s recent piece on the Roe Effect in The American Spectator. Eastland said children who were aborted in any given year can be considered "Missing Voters" 18 years later, the year they would have reached voting age. He calculated that abortions from 1973 to 1982 resulted in approximately 13 million Missing Voters in the 2000 election.

According to Ruse’s calculation, the total number of Missing Voters in the upcoming election will be 19 million.

While Ruse states that there is truly no way of knowing how these aborted children may have voted, “still, as a general proposition, children tend to absorb the values of their parents, including their political views, and tend to develop the same lifestyle as their family. So if pro-lifers beget pro-lifers, then pro-choicers beget pro-choicers – unless they abort them instead.

“If the Roe Effect is true,” says Ruse, “then it's not a stretch to say that the ‘pro-choice’ movement is quite literally killing itself.”