Another Brilliant Liberal Policy

Although the Roman Catholic Church holds all forms of birth control to be immoral, estimates indicate that a mere four percent of American Catholics adhere to this Church teaching. As expected, a rejection of birth control leads to larger families. Irrespective of the morality of the decision, it makes practical sense. Though some children fall away, one brought up in the Church--as I was--is more likely to remain therein than one who is only vaguely aware that such a Church could possibly exist. In other words, at the very least, breeders have a distinct numerical advantage.

Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below 20%--explaining, to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal youth voter campaigns today.

Alarmingly for the Democrats, the gap is widening at a bit more than half a percentage point per year, meaning that today's problem is nothing compared to what the future will most likely hold.

It is less than surprising that liberals do not hold papal teaching sacrosanct; I rather doubt that more than a handful of them have even bothered to read Humanae Vitae. Yet it might behoove those who refrain from propagating to reconsider given the implications of their actions.

Reckon that real soon we'll hear Maureen Dowd clamor that liberal women ought to stay home and have oodles of children? I reckon not.