Bill to save lives, boost left's future numbers

In the future, maybe this week’s action by the Louisiana State Senate to send SB 276 to Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s desk will help out the political prospects of Democrats bitterly opposed to it.

That bill makes the pair of drugs used for chemical abortions available by prescription only in Louisiana, as part of an effort that creates the crime of coerced abortion. By making these prescription-based, this makes more difficult obtaining these to induce nefariously ingestion by an unknowing pregnant female, as well as throws up a roadblock to those aiding and abetting in induction of abortions in Louisiana, which by law almost always is illegal.

Democrats raised all sorts of essentially phony objections to this, which marginally would change the ability to obtain these drugs, even to have an illegal abortion performed, and wouldn’t materially alter the ability and alacrity in using these for other purposes. As GOP state Sen. Jay Morris noted during debate, the real but hidden objection was it could prevent a portion of these illegal abortions in the state that runs contrary to the abortion-on-demand philosophy of the political left.

Yet this becoming law, which Democrats may see as a defeat now, actually may reap them future political gains in Louisiana. Not anytime soon, but perhaps a generation away, despite themselves.

This is because of natality patterns in the aggregate globally, in the U.S., and among the states. For decades, fertility has fallen everywhere, where the global replacement rate has been 2.1 per female. It last reached that in the U.S. in 2007 and by the latest estimates is now close to 1.6, mirroring other economically-developed countries although it is higher than most, and even the entire global rate is estimated to have fallen to replacement rate.

That means at the current rate the planet’s population will start shrinking in about four decades. Large-scale immigration, whether legally, into the U.S. may keep its population expanding but eventually that lack of domestic reproduction would catch up, and has negative consequences in various ways, such as solvency of pension funds like Social Security, inputs to continued economic growth, and dislocation in industries like education and construction.

Apparently, the culprit is a shift in attitudes towards more individualistic goals that deemphasize present enjoyment of raising children and future enjoyment of interacting with succeeding generations, But, it’s not all uniform; indeed, within America the states show wide variation. The most fertile state, South Dakota, has a rate about 50 percent higher than the lowest, Vermont.

However, there’s a very telling pattern in all of that. Of the 13 highest states – with Louisiana ranked fifth – all are “red” states. They reliably have voted Republican in the past few presidential elections, they all have GOP senators, and only one has a governor (Kansas; Nebraska officially is nonpartisan but clearly hews to the right in national voting behavior) not a Republican while all have both chambers of the legislatures in GOP hands, often by supermajorities.

By contrast, of the 13 lowest states, all but New Hampshire is a “blue” state where besides it all having just Democrats as senators (as does New Hampshire), only one governor not a Democrat (Nevada), and all legislatures controlled by Democrats. This shouldn’t surprise given the different conceptualizations behind conservatism and liberalism: liberals see the world more atomistically and in zero-sum terms and place emphasis on symbolic policy representation that in objective terms tends to command and control of others that relieves them of greater responsibility for positive interactions into the lives of others, a selfishness that translates into reduced desire to have families.

There are disparate allied factors as well related to these different ideologies. Conservatives are more likely culturally desirous of children and larger families, often for religious reasons, as opposed to liberals. For their part, liberals are more likely caught up in fringe behaviors such as the cult of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming that acts as a disincentive to want children.

And then there’s abortion. There’s perhaps no more demonstrative act that a female could perform than killing her unborn child in the womb that affects the fertility rate, part of the cultural mosaic that so strongly affects that rate. Add to that the long-confirmed data point in political science that family political attitudes are the single most important factor in shaping a person’s own political attitudes – partisanship strongly, specific issue preferences well, ideological identification somewhat – and that means as conservatives are much less likely than liberals to support abortion, then conservatives’ values are passed along through child-rearing in a disproportionately-higher fashion by the numbers.

Or to put it more crassly, conservatives are replicating holders of their issue preferences into superior voting numbers while liberals are aborting their own into minority status, the data trend reveals. Perhaps this is one reason why the left, whose leaders must sense this coming, increasingly support policies that promote subservience and dependence, as a method to break this demography as destiny

So, when conservatives rightfully attack the moral evil of abortion and the attendant disrespect of life it encourages, they fight the good fight but ironically make matters more difficult for themselves politically in the future. SB 276 will save lives, both of pregnant females and the unborn, but then many of those children will become socialized into environments the values of which disrespect life and a responsible individualism which enhances it. That only reinforces something conservatives already know: life is a series of choices that demands prudence in decision-making for which the individual must take responsibility without exporting their consequences to others, and in this instance preservation and valuation of life is the most important goal.