"The Roe Effect"

James Taranto writes in The Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal:

Overbrook Research, an Illinois-based polling firm, has a fascinating study out on public opinion and abortion. Authors Christopher Blunt and Fred Steeper analyze opinon-poll data from the bellwether state of Missouri between 1992 and 2006, focusing on voters' answers to the question whether they regard themselves as "pro-life" or "pro-choice."

The finding: Public opinion has moved strongly in the "pro-life" direction. In 1992, 34% of Missouri voters described themselves as "strongly pro-choice"; by 2006 this figure had declined to 23%. The proportion describing themselves as "strongly pro-life" rose from 26% to 36%. When those describing themselves as "somewhat" pro-whatever are included, the "pro-life" rise is 11 percentage points (30% to 41%), and the "pro-choice" decline is 13 points (43% to 30%).

These, of course, are measures of general sentiment, not specific policy preferences. "Pro-life" and "pro-choice" are imprecise, even tendentious, terms. Not everyone describing himself as "pro-life" wants to outlaw all abortions, and not everyone describing himself as "pro-choice" opposes all regulation on abortion. It's even conceivable that one could be both "pro-life" and "pro-choice" (if one believes abortion is immoral but shouldn't be illegal).

Still, a willingness to describe oneself as "pro-life" or "pro-choice" suggests a genuine sympathy with the anti- or pro-abortion side of the debate, respectively, since this is how they prefer to describe themselves. So what does this shift mean?

Blunt and Steeper argue that the debate has shifted profoundly, in a way that benefits the "pro-life" side...

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What they don't mention is the demographic consequences of abortion itself--that is, the Roe Effect. It was in 1973 that the Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade, found a "constitutional" right to abortion, effectively legalizing the practice nationwide. By 1992 the oldest post-Roe babies were only 19. In 2006, by contrast, the entire 18- to 29-year-old cohort had been born after Roe.

If one makes the reasonable assumptions that "pro-life" women have a lower propensity to abort than "pro-choice" ones do, and that parents are a strong influence on their chlidren's moral attitudes, then one would expect the post-Roe cohort to be more "pro-life" than their elders.

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(emphasis added)