In the blog post, “Sex Selective Abortion Gains New Ground in the West,” at Via Meadia, the author, Walter Russell Mead or one of his minions, profiles two recent cases. The first is a doctor in Australia who refused to refer a patient for an abortion because she made it clear that the abortion, on the 19 week-old baby, was for sex-selective reasons (the couple were immigrants from India with its strong boy-preference), and is now under investigation and at risk of losing his medical license. The second comes from Britain: first the decision not to prosecute two doctors who were caught on tape agreeing to perform sex-selective abortion, and second, a statement by the British Medical Association that “there may be circumstances, in which termination of pregnancy on grounds of fetal sex would be lawful”. (According to the original article, here, they say, “the pregnant woman’s views about the effect of the sex of the fetus on her situation and on her existing children should nevertheless be carefully considered,” which I’m assuming means that if she and her children are at risk of abuse from her husband, if she has a girl baby, then such an abortion would be OK. If that’s correct, it’s a creepy viewpoint, to try to minimize spousal abuse by making the batterer happy in this way.)
Interestingly, the comments on the site quickly turn into a fairly generic prolife/abortion rights debate. While there aren’t really enough comments to draw any strong conclusions, it does seem as if the abortion-rights crowd is very willing to be “nonjudgemental” even with respect to sex-selective abortions.
I was curious enough to poke around and look at the comments on the similar article on the Huffington Post. Lulu0418 says, “abortion is legal, and the right of the woman, and she doesn’t have to tell you why she wants one. And I stand by that.” Busterggi says, because it was a Christian group protesting this, “Christians just can’t resist sticking their noses in everyone else’s business no matter what country they’re in.” Hollowdream322 doesn’t actually say this is wrong, but does call it “pathetic,” wonders if they couldn’t separate out the sperm to sex-select at conception instead, because “if the women continue to get abortion’s [sic] due to the gender, they do create scar tissue and have a greater chance of becoming infertile.”
Sex-selective abortion is a huge issue in China, India, and other nations with strong boy-preferences. When I first read about this, I had thought that the scarcity of women would ultimately elevate their status, but quite the opposite has happened. A book I read on North Korea and the “underground railroad” helping refugees escape (through China to Thailand) described the increasing kidnapping of North Korean women (luring them through promises of more benign jobs) to become wives for Chinese men in poor rural areas — and not treated well in the hopes that they’ll stay, but treated as little more than slaves. And the boy-preference extends to the middle-class as well, so it’s not born of desperate poverty and the inability to provide a dowry.
In the West, so far, sex selection appears to be infrequent, but not unknown — immigrant groups preferring sons, white Americans preferring daughters. The difference is that our fertility industry promises sperm-sorting and IVF with preimplantation testing — my brief google searching (on google — bing brings up porn if you search for sex + selection + US) brought up multiple clinics offering their services. It’s really hard to imagine this being any more than a small number of participants — but, doing some more hunting around, I found an article by the Population Reference Bureau, from 2008, which says:
A new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports on a sex ratio that favors boys among U.S.-born children in Indian, Korean, and Chinese families. Using the 1990 and 2000 decennial censuses, the study found that the ratio of male to female births is much higher if the first child is a girl and even higher, by as much as 50 percent, if the first two children are girls. The normal ratio of males to females at birth is 1.05:1. However, if the first child is a girl, the ratio increases to 1.17:1, and if the first and second children are girls, the ratio increases more dramatically to 1.51:1 in favor of boys. The authors note that this is not evident with white parents and that the trend among the base group was not evident in the 1990 census.
Which means that this is not just an issue “over there.” But, inevitably, abortion-rights supporters abide by their “it’s the woman’s choice” mantra in pretty much every circumstance, and seem to downplay the issue in order to avoid Americans questioning our abortion-on-demand laws.
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