After being in the city for a week now, I’m astonished by how many times I’ve been accosted by representatives of Planned Parenthood. Often directly in front of a Catholic church, these young, cheery volunteers blithely ask, “Would you like to hear from Planned Parenthood today?” Is it invincible ignorance of Sanger’s views and Planned Parenthood’s history that prompts people of a racial minority to smile and promote it? And to someone wearing a religious habit as he approaches the steps of a church, no less?
Yesterday, Kathryn Jean Lopez highlighted another instance of this mind-boggling irony:
Directed by brave young Lila Rose, one of the latest investigative videos shows a woman in Planned Parenthood’s flagship clinic in Manhattan explaining that she has been married for seven years, has a daughter, and now wants a son. Just as Live Action has encountered before, a Planned Parenthood worker doesn’t flinch in the facilitation of a sex-selective abortion.
Lopez goes on to reveal that Obama, smart as he supposedly is, remains blind to his own inconsistencies.
Did someone say something about a war on women? Live Action just exposed one. Did someone say something about “equal rights”? President Obama has been heralded as a great defender of women’s rights, and his disingenuous Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act has been applauded as a seminal victory for liberal feminist demands. However, Obama opposed the legislation to prohibit sex-selective abortion.
June 5th, 2012 | 11:00 am
I think the term they use for the Lida Rose scenario is “family balancing” – when you’ve got one of sex A, it’s only natural to want one of sex B. I’ve heard this term used approvingly by pro-abortion advocates as a perfectly understandable motive.
Family balancing is not seen as “anti-woman” because the way they talk about it the couple would be just as likely to want to abort a boy as a girl. Although I doubt this scenario really comes up that often, that’s the way I’ve heard it discussed. Well, if you believe in abortion — why not? Your needs as a family should come first, I guess.
It would be interesting to hear what PP would say if it was a more clear-cut case of “we only want a son”. And perhaps a more ethnic looking person as the mom – I wonder if they would unblinkingly go ahead as they did here?
June 5th, 2012 | 11:35 am
Opposing such a bill does not constitute approval of sex-selective abortions. Passing such a bill would almost certainly do nothing to prevent sex-selective abortions.
Who is the one person who knows if an abortion is sought solely for the purpose of sex-selection? The pregnant mother. According to the bill, who is the person who can’t be legally touched if a sex-selection abortion is performed?
So while workers at Planned Parenthood are apparently supposed to dissuade women from procuring sex-selection abortions, those who castigate Obama for not supporting a bill—which in reality would do nothing but put abortion providers in peril—won’t even hold a woman who obtains a sex-selection abortion legally responsible. Not in the least. Not in any way. The law in effect says to women, “You have a right to a sex-selection abortion. Just don’t tell anyone you are having one. It won’t get you in trouble, but it could get others in hot water.”
It seems to me this is hypocrisy. These kinds of bills are not intended to prevent sex-selective abortions (and it is not even known for a fact that such abortions are performed in the United States). They are meant to try to embarrass people who vote against them. I doubt it, but maybe a law that was actually written to hold a woman responsible if she had an abortion for the purpose of sex-selection might have some effect. But this law was meant solely for the purpose of making Democrats look bad.
June 5th, 2012 | 11:41 am
By the way, 91% of abortions in the United States are performed before it is possible to determine the sex of the child.
An interesting approach (not without all kinds of problems, including possible constitutional ones) would be to make it illegal for medical personnel to reveal to a women the sex of her child. This would guarantee she could not have an abortion for the purpose of sex selection. One might also forbid medical personnel from revealing certain results of prenatal screening to pregnant women, such as a finding of Down syndrome.
June 5th, 2012 | 11:57 am
I don’t know, David. There is a difference between wanting one and performing one. Mom’s tend to be passive, if possibly willing, participants in the act.
I do agree such bills are also about politics, for which, I’m shocked.
June 5th, 2012 | 12:22 pm
David, A political bill? In OUR political system? Heaven forfend. It’s a good thing only those eeeeevil Republicans would do such a thing. Thank goodness Democrats are above such hypocrisy and political maneuvering.
June 5th, 2012 | 12:33 pm
David Nickol,
“These kinds of bills are not intended to prevent sex-selective abortions… They are meant to try to embarrass people who vote against them.”
Actually – it’s both. And it’s only our culture that has mostly lost its even keel of social stigma that objects outright to such embarrassment.
David, I’ve been following your postings for a long time, of course. You often have some good insights and I think call people out fairly effectively. But it’s comments like this one:
“(and it is not even known for a fact that such abortions are performed in the United States)”
interjected in the middle of your previous statement, that make me seriously question whether you are really always just trying to get at the truth, as you model yourself to be.
Yes, David, I’m sure that no one is *really* taking Planned Parenthood up on the offer.
June 5th, 2012 | 12:43 pm
Well, considering how Christianity was used to justify slavery, the question could</i< be turned around as well.
And it's kind of funny that a devotee of an expressly evangelical religion would be bemused at the idea of people trying to spread an idea to a likely-unwilling audience…
June 5th, 2012 | 12:57 pm
I got no problem trying to shame people who do shameful things and have shameful attitudes toward the unborn. Sounds good to me.
June 5th, 2012 | 1:12 pm
What refraining from prosecuting a woman who procures a sex-selective abortion says is
“The woman is being taken advantage of. She has been fed a load of nonsense about abortion (‘It’s not a person’, ‘Your body, your choice’, etc. ad nauseam); in truth, there are two casualties in an abortion: one dead, one wounded.”
Why I should be concerned that abortion providers would be put in “peril” by any legislative action is beyond me. That sounds like a benefit, not a bug…
June 5th, 2012 | 1:23 pm
Mike Melendez and Fred,
It goes without saying that both political parties do this kind of thing all the time. That is not what bothers me (much, anyway). What bothers me is that people like Sebastian White fall for it. We don’t even know for a fact that abortions for sex selection are performed in America. If they are, this bill would have had no impact on it whatsoever. And yet people seem actually to believe that the Republicans are feminists, trying to protect baby girls from being aborted, and Obama is not really on the side of women, because he lets this go on.
On top of everything else, the vote was 246 in favor and 168 against. But the Republicans brought the bill up under rules that required a two-thirds majority, knowing it would fail. This was not a meaningful effort to pass a bill that would actually have an affect on sex-selective abortion.
June 5th, 2012 | 1:39 pm
Yes, David, I’m sure that no one is *really* taking Planned Parenthood up on the offer.
JDD,
Has it ever happened that someone in the United States has had a sex-selective abortion? I don’t know, but my guess is that it happens occasionally. But first, would this law prevent it from happening in the future? I can’t imagine how. What woman seeking a sex-selective abortion would be dumb enough to tell her doctor? Second, is sex-selective abortion a significant problem in the United States with a legislative solution? See this article from the Washington Post.
June 5th, 2012 | 2:16 pm
David @ 1:23, All sarcasm aside, I’m perfectly aware that the bill would have zero affect on sex-selective abortion. And while I’m not naive enough to believe embarassing Democrats is not one purpose of the bill, I believe it has a larger purpose. It poses the questions to pro-choice voters and politicians, “Is sex-selective abortion wrong? If so, why? If it’s not a person we’re killing, then it’s not a man or a woman, so what’s the problem? If it is wrong, then why is convenience-selective abortion _not_ wrong? Is the fetus only a person of it’s (potentially) female?” I think it’s an exercise worth doing just for that reason.
June 5th, 2012 | 2:24 pm
I don’t know whether my last comment got eaten by cyberspace or if this will duplicate it, but just in case:
David @1:23, All sarcasm aside, I’m perfectly aware that a) sex-selective abortion is not a huge problem in the U.S., though it probably does happen, particularly among some immigrant groups, and b) the bill in question would have no affect on the sex-selective abortion that does exist. But really, that’s beside the point. I’m not naive enough to believe that embarrassing Democrats was no part of the bill’s purpose, but it has a larger purpose. It brings before the public the following questions:
Is sex-selective abortion wrong?
If it is, why? If the fetus is not a person, it’s not male or female; what’s the problem?
If it is wrong, what makes it more wrong than convenience-selective abortion? Is the fetus only a person if it is female? For me, the whole exercise is worthwhile just to get that out in the open.
June 5th, 2012 | 2:27 pm
Here’s a question for those who oppose abortion for sex-selection. What is your proposal for laws against it that would (1) be constitutional (assuming Roe is not overturned), (2) have a reasonable chance of passing (let’s assume, for the sake of this discussion that Romney defeats Obama and the Republicans take both houses of congress), and would actually prevent abortions for sex selection from occurring? I can understand why those who are pro-life would appreciate any anti-abortion legislation, no matter how symbolic. But what if you want the law to actually do something?
I personally oppose sex-selective abortion, but I don’t see any way the law can effectively prevent it. And since 91 percent of abortions take place too early in pregnancy to determine the sex of the child, and there are numerous reasons why women in the other 9 percent might be having abortions, what percentage of women do you estimate are having sex-selective abortions?
June 5th, 2012 | 3:35 pm
David,
You nailed it in your first post and didn’t realize it. Politics is said to be the art of the possible. Part of that art is persuading other people to agree with you. In many cases, demonstrating inconsistencies in one way of thinking helps to accomplish that.
As we, as a people, seem to have abandoned reasoning together, what is left is theater, not just in the sense of show but in the sense of getting through the walls people build to defend their preconceptions. It’s a very rough tool for persuasion but sometimes it works.
For example, if you agree that sex selection abortions are wrong but laws against them are unenforceable due to Roe vs Wade interpretations, maybe Roe vs Wade is problematic?
Of course, theater has limits. It frequently tips over into preaching to the choir, which persuades no one though it strengthens walls, if sometimes irrationally. I’m particularly fascinated, in a negative sense, with the claim “You don’t vote on civil rights.” All of our civil rights have been voted on, if only to recognize that they are inalienable. You can’t be more irrational than to claim an obvious falsehood. Yet the claim is made.
June 5th, 2012 | 5:52 pm
It seems to me this is hypocrisy. These kinds of bills are not intended to prevent sex-selective abortions (and it is not even known for a fact that such abortions are performed in the United States). They are meant to try to embarrass people who vote against them.
Even if they do break the law, at least they will not act as if there were nothing wrong with what they’d done.
Laws should be based on what is right and what is wrong, not what laws are easily enforced and what is difficult to enforce. The most difficult sort of law to enforce is the law against rape, but the world wouldn’t necessarily be a better place if people felt perfectly free to brag about having raped other people.
June 6th, 2012 | 9:57 am
Blake, the problem is that people would still be able to brag about rape if there was no way the law could possibly be used to prove that rape had actually occurred. You could brag about it all day long with impunity if there was no way a court could convict you. In fact that would probably make the bragging even more fun. This is only an analogy so I can’t come up with a scenario of how that would work with rape, but that’s the way it works with sex-selective abortion.
After all, for someone to be convicted of having a sex-selective abortion, the prosecution would have to convince that the following condition existed in the mother’s mental state: that the mother desired a sex-selective abortion, and that she wouldn’t have wanted the abortion anyway for any other possible reason, since any other reason (whether an alternative reason or an additional reason) would “justify” the abortion in law. Good luck convincing a jury that there is no reasonable doubt about that. It could never happen, really.
June 6th, 2012 | 11:58 am
Blake, the problem is that people would still be able to brag about rape if there was no way the law could possibly be used to prove that rape had actually occurred. You could brag about it all day long with impunity if there was no way a court could convict you.
It’s actually not hard to establish what constitutes a sex-selection abortion.
There are many crimes that have the burden of establishing motive. It’s not a new concept.
June 6th, 2012 | 1:59 pm
Yes, establishing motive is important.
But name me another crime in which an action is legal in every circumstance, regardless of the actions of of any of the actors (barring any *additional* crimes being committed), unless one particular motive is involved. I don’t think you can do it.
All the defense has to do is posit a different motive, with all the circumstances being identical, and the “crime” becomes a non-crime. Remember the burden of the prosecution: to *prove* that the mother had no other reason, even a really stupid or fanciful one, to want the abortion. They have to prove what she was not thinking. That’s just not legally tenable.
June 6th, 2012 | 4:25 pm
Blake and pentamom,
Under the proposed federal law and the very similar Arizona law enacted recently, the mother is entirely exempt. She may not be prosecuted if she turns herself in to the police and gives a sworn statement saying, “I had an abortion because I was pregnant with a girl and I want a boy!” The only people who can be prosecuted are the abortionist, anyone who pressured the woman into having a sex-selective abortion, or (in the case of the federal bill) anyone who drove the woman across state lines for the purpose of her having a sex-selective abortion. It seems to me it puts a woman who chooses to be malicious in a powerful position. She can claim her husband pressured her into having an abortion because he wanted a son rather than a daughter. Or if she has an abortion and knew the sex of the child beforehand, she can claim she told the doctor she wanted to abort because she wanted a baby of the opposite sex, and he performed the abortion. Since she is not guilty of anything under the law, she will not be incriminating herself by saying she had an abortion for the purpose of sex-selection. It may not be a likely scenario, but I think it does show the possible danger of allowing someone involved in possible criminal activity to be totally exempt from criminal prosecution.
June 6th, 2012 | 9:00 pm
You’re right, David, that fairly unlikely scenario COULD get someone in trouble.
I did understand that the mother wouldn’t be prosecuted, but I guess I wasn’t imaginative enough to come up with a motive for a mother testifying in a court of law that she had one, and only one, motive for seeking an abortion. I’m fairly sure “what you were thinking at the time” is pretty perjury-proof, when it comes to something where “what you were thinking” affects ONLY your motive and NOT your actions. Even then, it seems like it would be pretty easy for defense counsel to introduce some reasonable doubt. Given the burden of proof, it still seems fairly unlikely that any sensible prosecutor would even bring the case (though I realize there are some pretty non-sensible prosecutors out there.)
Leaving all that aside, this thing wouldn’t survive a single federal court challenge anyway. If I were in the House, I would have voted against it, too, and it has NOTHING to do with a lack of desire to protect ANY child from abortion.
June 6th, 2012 | 9:07 pm
I mean, the “motive” comparison doesn’t really add up. Establishing that someone shot his wife because he had the motive of her burning his dinner might change the charge from negligent homicide (“honest, sheriff, I was just cleaning the gun and it went off!”) to manslaughter.
But if you have to prove that he shot her because she burned the dinner, which is illegal, but NOT because she mouthed off at him in a private conversation, that’s a different matter — especially if there is a putative constitutional principle which states that a husband has a right to shoot his wife for any reason he chooses, except if he’s mad that she burned his dinner.
June 7th, 2012 | 4:51 am
David Nickol & Pentamon
In the case of a malicious allegation, you are overlooking the principle of “Testis unus testis nullus”; no one can be convicted on the uncorroborated evidence of a single witness, however credible and reliable. Unless, in the case of the abortionist, there were independent evidence of exorbitant charging, or the like, it is difficult to see how this hurdle could be overcome.
Of course, if you had two or more such allegations against an abortionist and the jury were satisfied that the offences were sufficiently linked in time, character and circumstance as to amount to one course of criminal conduct, then the women’s evidence would be mutually corroborative.
June 7th, 2012 | 9:07 am
Well, Michael, I wasn’t “overlooking” anything, because I wasn’t assuming any conclusion — I was just agreeing that David had come up with a scenario where a woman might be induced to testify in that way. I wasn’t assuming anything about the outcome.
June 7th, 2012 | 1:22 pm
Under the proposed federal law and the very similar Arizona law enacted recently, the mother is entirely exempt. She may not be prosecuted if she turns herself in to the police and gives a sworn statement saying, “I had an abortion because I was pregnant with a girl and I want a boy!”
Just curious, do those of you who defend “family balance” abortions also believe that children have a right to both a mother and a father?
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