Secondhand Smokette has a terrific column out in today’s San Francisco Chronicle reviewing the book Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls by Mara Hvistendahl. Hvistendahl, no pro lifer, demonstrates that because of sex selection abortion, there are 160 million fewer women and girls than would otherwise be with us. That’s quite a toll.
This female dearth is leading to societies with severe gender imbalances, such as those in China and India, into an era of instability and an upsurge in sex crimes. Debra expresses alarm and notes that this agenda has reached US shores. She concludes that sex selection is a major human rights concern. From “In This Brave New World, Girls Disappear:
San Francisco internist Sunita Puri warns, “The technology moves faster than the discussion, and we have no data on the short- and long-term consequences of what we’re doing.” Puri is the lead author of a 2011 article in Social Science & Medicine that looked at the fetal sex selection among Indian immigrants. Authors interviewed 65 immigrant women who had sex-selection abortions in America. Some feared that a daughter would engage in consensual sex and bring shame on the family. Some told of coercion – from their husbands and mothers-in-law – to produce a male heir. Many lied to their doctors, saying that they could not afford a baby, when their family did not want them to have another girl.
These immigrant women, the study observed, “are both the assumed beneficiaries of reproductive choice while remaining vulnerable to family violence and reproductive coercion.” Puri believes clinical studies are needed to look at the potential harm that comes with the status quo. Canadian sociologist Sharada Srinivasan has another suggestion. As she told Hvistendahl, at some point, feminists have to define sex selection as a human rights abuse. That would be a good start.
August 1st, 2011 | 7:57 am
Since the article concludes with what should not be done in a decent society, direct abortion itself, of any kind and for whatever reason, should be idetified as another thing which should always be excluded.
August 1st, 2011 | 8:41 am
The silence from the pro-choice crowd is deafening. They have to overlook grotesque issues like this, and the criminal behavior of abortionists like Kermit Gosnell and Steven Brigham, to keep abortion enshrined as a legal right. Pro-lifers have to become much more vocal on this issue, and I think it’s very important for us to push legislation that would require every abortion clinic to post a sign saying that no woman, not even a minor, can be coerced into an abortion. Immigrant women who are being forced to abort their daughters might not be fully aware of their rights.
August 1st, 2011 | 8:49 am
“Is sex selection abortion a human rights abuse?”
One wonders what kind of lawyer would ask a dumb question like that, given that fetuses have no rights (human or otherwise) that can be defended against “abuse.”
The answer, in a word: NO.
HW
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
August 1st, 2011 at 8:57 am
You’re wrong as usual, HW. Fetuses do have human rights. Just not against abortion. Kill a fetus, go to jail for murder in many states, and federal law protects fetuses too. For example, they can’t be used in live experimentation. Moreover, the point is sex selection.
holyterror Reply:
August 1st, 2011 at 12:16 pm
@Wesley J. Smith, This highlights the strange inconsistency of the law wrt the fetus.
We confer a kind of personhood on it in those laws *solely* based on the mother’s desire to carry to term. Which raises a lot of questions that we have not had the wherewithal to try to answer in terms of the law.
If we were being purely consistent then might causing the death of a “wanted” fetus be covered under “loss of property”??
HistoryWriter Reply:
August 1st, 2011 at 2:39 pm
@Wesley J. Smith,
Obfuscation! We’re not talking about felony murders here, we’re talking about sex-selection abortion, and since abortion is legal within various gestational parameters “human rights” never enters into the equation. Or are you suggesting that the Supreme Court has been misinterpreting the 14th Amendment?
Really, Wesley: you’re an attorney so please stop playing to the peanut gallery. Just how do you propose to determine an abortion clinic patient’s state of mind? Are you going to strap her into a lie detector beforehand, so that you can determine what her “true intention” is?
I think you’re just looking to concoct another class of “victims,” as you tried doing with that biological colonialism “you-can’t-sell-your-eggs” nonsense a couple of months ago.
HW
holyterror Reply:
August 1st, 2011 at 3:22 pm
@HistoryWriter, Your answer is an obfuscation, since you fail to acknowledge the legal conundrum Wesley has pointed, namely the separate charge laws which level murder charges at someone who kills a fetus while committing murder, or who causes the deliberate death of a fetus on an unwilling pregnant woman.
If you want to argue that those laws aren’t based on human rights, then do that. Don’t shift the discussion to avoid the problem!
HistoryWriter Reply:
August 2nd, 2011 at 9:14 am
@holyterror,
Those laws are of absolutely no relevance to the question of sex selection abortion. Each state can define “murder” as it wishes (see 10th Amendment), however no state may use a murder statute to curtail voluntary abortion. Wesley is trying to make a “human rights” case where none exists.
HW
August 1st, 2011 | 1:06 pm
Mara’s book is fascinating and an excellent read. What many people overlook in her book is that the 163 million missing girls are a direct result of population control advocacy by western countries. Many population control advocates encouraged sex selective abortion as an “ethical” way to reduce Asia’s population. Now Asia is faced with an “epidemic” of men that threatens women’s safety even more (some experts say it will be as devastating as the AIDS epidemic) and progressives really do not seem to care.
August 1st, 2011 | 1:11 pm
The main feminist argument supporting this phenomenon is that these women are entrenched in an oppressive culture that can not be changed over night; we must be patient. They also argue, in essence, that abortion rights extend women’s rights and that we can’t limit that empowerment just because it is used by some to further oppress others.
FYI.
August 1st, 2011 | 1:21 pm
I’m not sure it can be a human rights issue as the damages are to society, not specifically the fetuses. I mean barring abortion itself regardless of gender.
Most of the problems of population balance hurt the living, but the problem is that we can’t judge a person’s right to abort based on that. We can on the harm it does to the fetus, but basing it on the harm to society is skirting the line of defining what a “good birth” is. I’m not sure that’s a good precedent to have.
August 1st, 2011 | 2:46 pm
The practice may eventually result in such a scarcity of child-bearing-capable females that the governments involved will begin paying incentives to people who have daughters. Anyway, it’s not America’s problem. India, China and a few other 3rd world countries I can think of could probably use a healthy dose of population decline. Maybe if that happens US manufacturers will start bringing their jobs back here.
HW
August 1st, 2011 | 6:24 pm
The fetus does have rights.
They have ethical/moral/human rights.
To say that the law does not recognize their rights and so therefore those rights do not exist is wrong.
Consider slavery: it is because slaves have rights that slavery laws were overturned. We did not “give” slaves their rights. We stopped violating their rights.
HistoryWriter Reply:
August 2nd, 2011 at 9:18 am
@Blake,
Well then, go and amend the Constitution. Until then, fetal “rights” are what the Constitution says they are, not what some moral philosophers and theologians say they are. I think you should understand that we’re a nation of secular laws, not a theocracy.
HW
Blake Reply:
August 2nd, 2011 at 5:02 pm
@HistoryWriter,
Well then, go and amend the Constitution. Until then, fetal “rights” are what the Constitution says they are, not what some moral philosophers and theologians say they are.
This doesn’t even make sense.
There’s no “right to abortion” in the Constitution.
The “right” to privacy over one’s body only makes sense if one assumes that a fetus is part of a woman’s body – like a cancer or tumor.
It’s only a matter of time until children are recognized as full human beings. It is already happening. No change to the Constitution is required.
Nor is this in any way a religious issue, except in that one religion (humanism/Unitarian Universalism) has been trying to get its core assumptions accepted as some sort of state ideology. After all, the only people who could possibly accept the otherwise-nonsensical view that fetuses are somehow not human are people who embrace Occam’s Razor as an article of faith.
Fortunately, humanism’s privileged days are coming to an end, as even humanists are starting to recognize that they are in fact only just another religion – not The Truth.
August 1st, 2011 | 7:40 pm
Of course it’s a human rights abuse. It’s also an open challenge to centuries of important, hard-won progress in equal rights for women.
If certain segments of the left hadn’t built an ideological iron wall around abortion, this would not be a controversial position.
HistoryWriter Reply:
August 2nd, 2011 at 9:21 am
@SparcVark,
As I asked Wesley, how does he propose to determine the intent of a client at an abortion clinic? How do you outlaw a decision process that can’t be determined in the first place? Of course the more rabid anti-choicers will argue that ANY abortion is a “human rights violation,” but thankfully nobody takes them very seriously.
HW
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
August 2nd, 2011 at 11:28 am
If you outlaw it, and an abortion happens after an ultrasound that determines sex, the abortion could be generally prohibited.
HistoryWriter Reply:
August 3rd, 2011 at 10:44 am
@Wesley J. Smith,
Nice try, but …. more and more jurisdictions are requiring ultrasounds as part of the abortion process, with a concomitant increase in those cases in which fetal gender can be determined. It makes no legal sense to make ultrasound examination a go/no-go criterion when ultrasound laws not only require the examination in the first place, but also that its results be communicated to the patient. I doubt if that kind of Catch-22 restriction would never pass constitutional muster. Besides, all the woman has to do is present herself for an abortion, have the ultrasound exam and then “change her mind” if it’s a boy.
Mind, I don’t agree with abortion for sex-selection, but there’s really no practical way to curtail it without trampling on abortion rights generally.
HW
Blake Reply:
August 2nd, 2011 at 5:03 pm
@SparcVark,
Of course it’s a human rights abuse. It’s also an open challenge to centuries of important, hard-won progress in equal rights for women.
Murdering your baby is not “equal rights for women”.
Women grieve for the lost fetuses more than men do.
The fantasy that you can make babies you did not intend – then simply destroy them and hide the evidence – is unraveling. It is not based on truth: real civil rights are always based on truth.
HistoryWriter Reply:
August 3rd, 2011 at 10:45 am
@Blake,
“Murdering your baby…” Oh, come on.
HW
Blake Reply:
August 3rd, 2011 at 7:02 pm
@HistoryWriter,
Murdering your baby:
1. causing the death of a human being through direct action
2. intentional, with malice aforethought
What isn’t murder?
HistoryWriter Reply:
August 4th, 2011 at 7:02 am
@Blake,
It isn’t murder because murder is a crime defined by statute, and the statutory definition doesn’t include abortion. You’ll have to call it something else if you want to be accurate. How about “feticide?”
HW
August 2nd, 2011 | 5:06 pm
The “right” to privacy over one’s body only makes sense if one assumes that a fetus is part of a woman’s body – like a cancer or tumor.
I should mention, men used to have a presumed “right of privacy” over what went on in their home. “A man’s home is his castle” is actually from a medieval concept of law, and it continues to linger even to this day – but we have come to recognize that just because a man owns his home, and has a right to privacy inside of it, that does not give him the right to bring a woman or child into that home, and then use the fact that the woman is in his home as an excuse to murder, using the idea that a man has the right to do whatever he wants in his own home.
If a woman has the right to do what she wants with her own body, she also has an obligation to refrain from using her body in ways that infringe on the rights of other people.
HistoryWriter Reply:
August 3rd, 2011 at 10:54 am
@Blake,
It’s sometimes difficult for non-lawyers to understand legal reasoning, especially when they confuse what’s legal with what they think is “right.” If you’re patient enough to do it, read the decisions in Griswold v. Connecticut and Row v. Wade for yourself, instead of letting special interest groups interpret them for you.
You made the statement earlier that “real civil rights are based on truth.” You know, Christians have never stopped bashing Pontius Pilate for asking Jesus a perfectly reasonable question: what is the truth? Maybe you’d like to tell us what “the truth” is, and why that’s so. You may be surprised to learn that some people will disagree with you.
HW
HW
HistoryWriter Reply:
August 3rd, 2011 at 10:55 am
@HistoryWriter,
Did I actually say ROW v. Wade?? That’s the choice you have getting across a river. It’s Roe v. Wade, of course. Sorry ’bout that.
HW
Blake Reply:
August 3rd, 2011 at 7:01 pm
@HistoryWriter,
You made the statement earlier that “real civil rights are based on truth.” You know, Christians have never stopped bashing Pontius Pilate for asking Jesus a perfectly reasonable question: what is the truth? Maybe you’d like to tell us what “the truth” is, and why that’s so.
The truth: we hold it to be self-evident that all human beings are created equal.
Roe vs. Wade does not recognize the mother and the child as having an equal right to life. It recognizes the mother as being worth more than the child.
Having a body means having rights, but also responsibilities. Roe vs. Wade is based on the idea that one has the right to “privacy” – but it is an abuse of the idea of “privacy” to bring another person into your private sphere and then use that “right to privacy” to kill that person.
It used to be – back in the bad old days – that men had the right to do what they liked to their women, because the law said their home was their private sphere.
It used to be that people could do whatever they wanted to their animals and their children, because animals and children are not “people”.
Today we recognize the falsity of both arguments. It is increasingly becoming recognized that abortion is not a Constitutional right, but a law put in place by ideologically motivated judges who did to the fetus what earlier ideologically motivated judges once did to slaves.
The right to abortion is not compatible with the equality of all human beings. The right to life is one of our nation’s founding principles; the right to sleep around without consequences is not.
This is truth. If you dispute it, or have a more accurate idea of what “truth” is, let’s hear it – because “It’s sometimes difficult for non-lawyers to understand legal reasoning, especially when they confuse what’s legal with what they think is “right.” If you’re patient enough to do it, read the decisions in Griswold v. Connecticut and Row v. Wade for yourself, instead of letting special interest groups interpret them for you. is not truth: it’s a non-argument based on an ad hominem (the insinuation that I’m just not smart enough to fully comprehend what is going on is the real argument being made here – unless of course you’d like to post the part I’m “missing”, and explain what it is I don’t understand?)
HistoryWriter Reply:
August 4th, 2011 at 7:08 am
@Blake,
Read the cases for yourself and you’ll understand the reasoning. The part you’re missing is that the fetus isn’t considered a “person” for these purposes. Your “right to life” comes into being once you’re born (or naturalized) and thereby become a citizen of the United States. I know this may be difficult to accept, but it’s the law of the land. I wasn’t kidding when I said that you should try amending the Constitution, because that’s the only way fetuses are ever going to enjoy the same rights as “born people.”
HW
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