The Roe Effect, Redux

James Taranto has written again on the Roe Effect, the collision of demographics and abortion views:

The Roe effect, however, refers specifically to the nexus between the practice of abortion and the politics of abortion. It seems self-evident that pro-choice women are more likely to have abortions than pro-life ones, and common sense suggests that children tend to gravitate toward their parents' values. This would seem to ensure that Americans born after Roe v. Wade have a greater propensity to vote for the pro-life party--that is, Republican--than they otherwise would have.

I find his analysis fascinating, as this is a real demographic trend that has yet to be seriously addressed. There are consequences to population reduction, especially targeted reduction. Taranto points out:

More than 40 million legal abortions have occurred in the United States since 1973, and these are not randomly distributed across the population. Black women, for example, have a higher abortion ratio (percentage of pregnancies aborted) than Hispanic women, whose abortion ratio in turn is higher than that of non-Hispanic whites. Since blacks vote Democratic in far greater proportions than Hispanics, and whites are more Republican than Hispanics or blacks, ethnic disparities in abortion ratios would be sufficient to give the GOP a significant boost--surely enough to account for George W. Bush's razor-thin Florida victory in 2000.

Here's a question. If an activist group came across these figures and decided to protest the fact that black and hispanic women have abortions at higher ratios than white women, how would they wage this campaign? Would they demand that abortion be marketed more to white women? Would they cry "Eugenics!" (And they'd be entitled to, in light of Margaret Sanger's positions. Check out this article from blackgenocide.org.) Would they demand restrictions on abortion? Stuff to ponder.