1 Comment

David Nickol
May 30th, 2012 | 5:08 pm

While it is not mentioned in this Washington Post piece titled Congress debates ban on sex-selective abortions as researchers explore how often they happen, it is interesting to note that in the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, one group of people is exempted from any legal liability—predictably, the women who procure the abortions:

Exception—A woman upon whom a sex-selection or race-selection abortion is performed may not be prosecuted or held civilly liable for any violation of this section, or for a conspiracy to violate this section.

Of course, there is an ongoing debate about why those who want to criminalize abortion don’t want to see women punished or held liable in any way for procuring abortions. But it seems to me many of the arguments about not prosecuting women for abortion are not relevant when we get down to abortions for very specific reasons. So it does seem to me that, in a certain sense, abortion opponents are intent on maintaining abortion on demand. There is apparently no reason for having an abortion that abortion opponents are willing to warn women they may not entertain.