Abortion Rates and Voting Behavior

Michael Barone examines the latest data on abortion rates and finds an interesting pattern :

Roe v. Wade imposed the same legal abortion regime on the entire nation and made abortion a national political issue. Yet Americans in different regions and states have in effect established very different behavioral abortion regimes. Abortion is very common in New York (abortion rate of 38.2) and New Jersey (34.3), only about half as common in Illinois (18.9) and Texas (17.3), and lower in South Carolina (7.9) and Utah (6.4). Cultural liberals have noted that divorce rates are relatively low in some politically liberal states like Massachusetts and relatively high in some politically conservative states like Oklahoma. But abortion rates seem highly correlated with cultural attitudes and with, at least during the time that abortion has been a major political issue, voting behavior.

(Via: The Corner )