Sex-Selective Abortion & "Pro-Choice" Hypocrisy
The “pro-choice” community was backed into a difficult, and illogical, position last week, a consequence of their own actions.
While Planned Parenthood claims to oppose gendercide, choosing to abort a baby based on the sex of the unborn child, counselors at its affiliates are actively facilitation the abhorrent practice. Live Action, a pro-life organization, caught at least two different Planned Parenthood clinics on tape promoting sex-selective abortion.
Even worse for the abortion lobby is that at the same time they were trying to spin their way out of being caught supporting the abortion of a fetus solely on the fact that it was female, they were vehemently working to stop legislation in Congress that would ban the practice.
While Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and other pro-abortion organizations were able to sway enough Democrats in Congress to defeat the bill, the logic of the pro-choice position was damaged in the process.
The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, or PRENDA, would have simply made it illegal to perform or force someone to obtain an abortion because of the sex of the unborn child.
Aborting an unborn baby because he or she is of the “wrong” gender is discrimination plain and simple. In any other area of American society it would be outlawed and disgraced.
But pro-choice hypocrisy abounds.
The contradiction of the pro-choice community on the issue of gendercide was best summed up by President Obama in the official White House statement opposing PRENDA, “The Administration opposes gender discrimination in all forms, but . . . [t]he government should not intrude in medical decisions or private family matters in this way.” So it’s an “acceptable” form of discrimination? Not to the pro-life community.
Writing at the XX Factor blog at Slate, pro-choice advocate Allison Benedikt demonstrated the convoluted logic of those on the pro-choice side who express discomfort with sex-selective abortion:
If pro-choicers object to aborting because of the sex of the fetus, aren’t we then saying that abortion is “murdering” girls? Aren’t we basically arguing that a fetus is not a blank slate but a future possibility? That is not the case to make if your goal is to protect abortion rights.
Benedikt is exactly right. If “these are fetuses with female genitals or male genitals—not little girls and little boys,” why would the pro-choice community condemn sex-selection abortion at all?
The answer exposes the faulty --and deeply tragic --logic of the pro-choice position.
Here is the real problem: “pro-choice” advocates are really pro-abortion. According to their worldview, anything that would restrict any abortion for any reason must be opposed.
The problem with all of this is that sex-selection is a real problem, even in the U.S., and pro-choice advocates know it.
As “pro-choice” feminist author Mara Hvistendahl details in her critically acclaimed book, “Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men”:
Sex selection remains mostly invisible, however, a more pervasive and yet quieter epidemic, observed only by demographers scrutinizing birth registration records years after the fact—and, of course, by the hundreds of millions of people who live or will live in communities where women are scarce.
Hvistendahl concluded that sex-selection worldwide, through a “combination of ultrasound and abortion . . . has claimed over 160 million potential women and girls—in Asia alone.” She noted by comparison, “AIDS has claimed an estimated 25 million people worldwide—a mere fraction of the number of missing females.” Yet, sex-selection “remains mostly invisible.”
She told me when I interviewed her on my radio show that the problem with sex-selection goes far beyond the abortion of girls; the dearth of women in certain to societies can lead to other social ills, including sex trafficking.
Planned Parenthood urges “leaders” to address the “legal, economic, and political conditions” that allow sex-selection abortions to occur. Yet, they oppose a simple bill to outlaw the practice that would shut down the legal, economic, and political conditions that permit gendercide to occur.
But here is the real reason they won’t support any effort to ban the abhorrent practice: As Planned Parenthood states, such a law could lead to “curtailing access to abortion.”
Being “pro-choice” is a policy position that really means you are pro-abortion, where the right to terminate a human life is to be placed as a good above all others, even if it means allowing the intentional discrimination and destruction of women.