Talk:Roe effect

message: see also Autopoiesis?
:maybe survival of the fittest is more appropriate? - Omegatron 13:11, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
This article is ridiculous, its just idle speculation by ONE columnist, which doesn't make it much of a fact...there are a lot of little theories columnists and thinkers come up with. That doesn't make them notable. In fact, I just came up with one now. The condom effect. Condom users are going to become less frequent, therefore...
sigh. I don't have the energy to really challenge this article, but i can't imagine it will last long protohiro 23:51, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Right on. One phrase in particular seems ridiculous - "Children usually follow their parents' political leanings." Ron Reagan, Maya Keyes, I could go on. --Josh Atkins (talk - contribs) 21:22, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: Per Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Roe_effect. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 16:40, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Afd failed

message: After User:BCSWowbagger pointed out (in this edit's summary) that the external links were poorly formatted, I tried to improve them and ended up rewriting the whole article. (The are no problems with the external links section in my version, mainly because it doesn't have one!).
The Roe effect is a theory about the long-term effect of abortion on the political balance of the United States. It is named after Roe v. Wade, the court case which effectively legalized abortion nationwide. Its best-known proponent is James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal who named this theory in Best of the Web Today, his OpinionJournal.com column.
Put simply, the theory states that
*those who favor legal abortion are much more likely to get one than those who oppose it, 
*since children usually follow their parents' political leanings,
*therefore pro-choice parents will tend to have fewer children
*so support for legal abortions will decline over time.
A similar argument suggests that political groups which oppose abortion will tend to have more supporters in the long run than those who support it. See "The Roe Effect: The right to abortion has diminished the number of Democratic voters" by Taranto (Wall Street Journal, July 6 2005) for a detailed explanation and statistical evidence that supports the theory.
Taranto first mentioned this idea in January 2003, and named it in December 2003. He later suggested that the Roe effect helps explain (and is confirmed by) the fact that the fall in teen birthrates is "greatest in liberal states, where pregnant teenagers would be more likely to [have abortions] and thus less likely to carry their babies to term."
The Journal has also published articles about this this topic by Larry L. Eastland ("The Empty Cradle Will Rock", June 28 2004) and Arthur C. Brooks ("Liberal/Conservative Fertility Gap", August 22 2006).
See also
* Legalized abortion and crime effect
* William Bennett, especially his Radio show comment on abortion
:Category:Abortion
One of my aims was to make the link to Taranto's main article about the effect more prominent, given that earlier commenters on this page seem to missed it.
I thought I'd seek comments and improvements from other editors before making such a major change to the article. Thanks in advance, CWC(talk) 02:19, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you're too modest.  The article as is barely survived an AfD last year, and I doubt it would do so today.  I'm going to be bold and post your version.  Hope you don't mind. --BCSWowbagger 03:23, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I still don't like the way the links are placed, and I think there's more history to the theory than Taranto, though he definitely coined the phrase.  And we could stand to discuss the validity of the theory, scientifically speaking.  So, there's still improvement to be made, but you just had us leap forward.  Thanks.  --BCSWowbagger 03:44, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. There doesn't have to be a one-to-one correspondence between being pro-choice and having abortions, merely that someone who is pro-choice is more likely to have an abortion than someone who is not. Over the whole population, that disparity has an impact. Follow the links and look at the data, you see that there is a "fertility gap". Calling it a fertility gap highlights the point, also, in the hypothetical you present: delaying childbirth reduces the number of suitable childbearing years that a woman is fertile, so a woman who waits until later is less likely to have three, or four, or five, children than a woman who has them starting earlier.Tommythegun 07:28, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Last week, at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Boston, (Dr. Fowler) presented research with colleagues at Harvard Medical School and Virginia Commonwealth University suggesting a link between variations of one gene affecting the neurochemical dopamine, which can help sensitize us to new experiences, and a tilt toward liberal political ideology.
The science is in its infancy but there is biological research into changes in socio-political patterns. The Roe Effect theory describes one of them. Longhorncross (talk) 08:07, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  New version 

message: There's a new study from sociologists at Northwestern University about whether attitudes on abortion are correlated with fertility.  It concluded that pro-life women do indeed have more children on average, which seems to support the Roe effect hypothesis (as one of the objections is that a pro-choice woman, although more likely to abort an unintended pregnancy than a pro-life woman, will nevertheless aim for the same family size and not have significantly fewer births).  This should probably be worked into the article.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/08/09/big-pro-life-families-are-shifting-abortion-debate/V4BrITabQNHVkXZgMOsSoK/story.html
http://paa2012.princeton.edu/papers/122289
128.233.4.247 (talk) 21:05, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  New study