Talk Elections

House debates bill to ban sex-selective abortions

By Shannon Bream
Published May 30, 2012
FoxNews.com

House members launched into a contentious debate Wednesday over a bill (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr3541rh/pdf/BILLS-112hr3541rh.pdf) that would ban abortions performed on the basis of gender-selection.
 
Though sex-selective abortions are typically thought of as a problem in countries like China, bill author Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., said Democrats and Republicans in the House agree that sex-selection abortions are occurring in the United States.
 
"The people of this country are overwhelmingly for this bill, and liberals are going to have to make up their mind whether they are so committed to abortion on demand that they think that includes killing little girls because they are little girls," Franks said.
 
Under his proposal, physicians who perform sex-selective abortions would face heavy fines and up to five years in jail.
 
The House, after closing out debate late Wednesday afternoon, is expected to vote on the proposal Thursday. It needs a two-thirds majority to pass.
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Read more (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/30/house-debates-bill-to-ban-sex-selective-abortions/)

Yes (R)

Laws like this haven't worked anywhere in the world they've been tried for a very simple reason:  You can always claim the abortion is because of something else. 

I would probably support it anyway just for the symbolism of it.

Yes (L).

People should be able to have abortions for whatever reason they want.

Lean yes. I really hate shoving my personal beliefs down the throats of others, but abortion where the life of the mother is not at stake is one instance where an exception is made.

No (D)

It's interesting that the question "Do you support abortion on demand" or variants always polls more positively than "Do you support sex-selective abortion"  You'd think that sex-selective abortion is necessarily included under "all abortion."

Anyway, my answer is that abortion should be legal, and people always do legal things for both good and bad reasons.

True, altho if a ban on sex-selective abortions were focused on the abortionists, it would be possible to go after them if their ratio was too skewed.

I do have a question, does the bill also ban sex-selective in-vitro fertilizations and if not, why not?

No (D).

Once again, the GOP is trying to manipulate the situation. There are probably very few sex-selective abortions in the U.S., and the GOP is trying to use that concept as an excuse to go after abortion doctors.

No....though this is very unfortunate, there is no way to combat this practice without making all abortions suspect. This law is so vague and so easy to use throughout pregnancy that a blanket that if challenged could have the ability to overturn Roe v. Wade.

As shua pointed out, this law is unenforceable and thus pointless even if it was a fundamentally good idea (which I'd argue it isn't, even if the thought behind it is fundamentally good, but not every "bad" thing should be criminalized.)

I would oppose this ban.

Maybe you don't like the reason for it, but it's not our decision to make.

I highly doubt sex-selective abortion is a major problem in the US.

If it were, the best way to deal with it would be to make it illegal for the parents to know about the sex of the fetus before the time limit for abortions is reached.

I don't really understand why people have such a burning dislike for this since many of them don't seem to care about killing the fetus for any other reason, not to mention this whole issue started after a sting, not someone who actually wanted to have a sex selective abortion. That's my two cents on it personally.

But I would certainly vote for the ban anyway. This "Moderate Hero" abortion stance is still preferable to the status quo and probably softens political support for abortion in general by some small marginal degree.

lol Trent Franks

How the hell do you enforce this?

I would support this, if only for the symbolism.

Disgusting. This has my full support.

Gentlemen- when do you support a cutoff?

That would require actually having a time limit for abortions.

This is a weirdly fascinating thread.

This is a stupid and obviously unenforcable idea. Of course I wouldn't support it.

I don't support murder, so at the point when you can take the fetus out of the womb and it survives, then I support a cutoff. But as long as it's somewhere between a clump of cells and a tiny little thing that looks like a lizard, you should be able to terminate it for whatever reason you want.

Unenforceable, therefore No (R).

24 weeks.

That's exactly why the GOP is doing this, hence my earlier coimment:

Yes, of course (I/D).

This is the bigger reason for opposing this, IMO. How the hell do you enforce something like this? It's not a proposal for a problem, it's just some weird attempt to whittle down abortion law.

No, although if you make it difficult to obtain late term abortions, you sort of end up in the same place, unless medical science can determine the sex of a fetus in the first trimester.

How could you possibly enforce this?  The woman could just say that the sex of the fetus wasn't the reason.

Is the sex of the fetus really something that an abortion clinic keeps track of?

What's funny is, this reminds me of some hálfvitar pro-lifers who seriously said that abortion isn't pro-woman because half of all aborted fetuses are female.

It doesn't matter whatever you want your abortion for, you should be able to have it.

Standard ultrasounds can usually discern the sex at around the end of the first trimester.  Early amniocentesis could make the determination as early as the 10th or 11th week. Last but not least, there's a test that can be done using the mother's blood that is 98% accurate in determining a child's sex in the eighth week.

So despite what one might hope, limiting abortion to the first trimester does not do much to prevent sex-selective abortion.

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Probably not, but it wouldn't be difficult to keep track of if clinics were required to. The development of the external genitalia becomes visible around the eighth week, and of course a chromosome test on the aborted tissue could be done if the abortion was done earlier.

A pro-choicer being against sex selective abortions is a hell of an oxymoron

Not if women's rights is more important to you than cultural relativism. 

     Even though banning sex-selective abortions is a clear violation of women's rights? Last time I checked, abortion on demand does mean abortion on demand, motivations be damned. This bill is a transparent attempt at abrogating of the rights of women.

It's hard for me to see how banning sex-selective abortions can violate women's rights when the vast majority of those being aborted in those procedures (especially among East and South Asian populations) are baby girls.  Especially when  you consider that these women are driven to abort them by the patriarchal cultural mores in which they are raised that deem sons as being more important than daughters.  

Far from cultural relativism, it's utilitarianism for most of us.

Does this extend to aborting fetuses because they have Down Syndrome or some other disease? If we take fetal life as not being worthy of protection, then wouldn't make more sense to have an abortion if the fetus has Down Syndrome?

     It's at best a poor substitute to actually undermining those patriarchal cultural mores. People frequently seem to think that a legal change is as good as a cultural change, which is a rather short-sighted view of the matter. The legal change can act as a bandage over the wounds of injustice, but it doesn't actually change anybody's mind.

     Besides, in the context of the United States, which the bill in question pertains to, there is hardly any evidence of sex-selective abortion existing, let alone it being a systemic problem. As I said earlier, this bill is an attack on legalized abortion.

To use another example, article 15 of India's Constitution bans discrimination based on caste, and though caste discrimination has diminished as India has modernized, it is still quite common in rural areas.  Since caste discrimination still exists, was it a pointless legal exercise to have banned such injustice?  Or was it important regardless to send a signal to the population that caste discrimination needed to end? 

I argue the same applies to the ongoing genocide being directed against female infants.  In time, the practice will end but it is important that we begin somewhere -even if it is initially just a legal statement.   


It isn't much of a problem now, but at some point it could become one.  I see no reason why we can't take pre-emptive action now to indicate to incoming immigrants from East and South Asia that the United States does not approve of the murder of baby girls, and will do whatever is necessary to prosecute those who engage in such actions. 

     It's not a pointless exercise, but it's not the complete solution. Beyond that, an effort has to be made to present arguments against the prevailing prejudices. Maybe I am mistaken, but it seems to me that some people think that passing a law is all that needs to be done.

     My point is, passing the law in question carries the negative impact of eroding away women's abortion rights. It may carry a positive impact in preventing the spread of this practice to the United States, but I think that at this early juncture we could avoid the issues of the proposed law by making attempts at educating immigrants from areas where sex-selective abortion is practiced. Let them know that forcing women to have abortions against their will inevitably violates various U.S. laws.

That would be an infinitely worse reason to support something than cultural relativism.

Of course that's not actually the reason, is it? It's part of the uniform: an extreme position supported by people who are absolutely not extreme because said position is the one that they are supposed to have. The less actual thought involved the better.

Obviously this is a generic comment about abortion as an issue in American politics and so applies equally to both sides...

If we were able to determine the sexual orientation of a fetus, would Trent Franks support a nondiscrimination act of the same nature?

The whole idea behind people being "pro-choice" is that no one should be able to influence what a women decides to do with own her own body. It doesn't matter if what her motivation is convince, rape or incest so why is sex selective different? Or is it only a Women's choice when it's not inconvenient for the pro choice argument?

It's hardly a woman's free choice to abort her baby for whatever reason when she's been effectively brainwashed by her culture into believing that sons are far more valuable than daughters, and that therefore the latter should be aborted if at all possible.  That is where I draw the line in the sand. 

She is the fetus?

No. It's not a problem in the US and it infringes on human rights.

You draw the line in the sand because if a women finds it more convenient for HER Situation to have a son than a daughter she's being brainwashed and it's not her choice?


Brainwashed? Please. Is it not brainwashing when there's hundreds of sites on the internet that "persuade you" that it's better to abort a baby than raise them in a low income situation? But it's brainwashing if people feel that having a boy is more benifical to their situation?

So it's a women's choice until her motivations for having an abortion doesn't benefit the female population?

So the line in the sand is basiclly if a Women wants an abortion because it's her body fine, If a women wants an abortion because she was raped fine, If a women wants an abortion because it hurts her health fine, If a women wants an abortion because it's convenient for her fine, BUT GOD FORBID If a women wants an abortion because she doesn't favor the sex of the child the LINE HAS BEEN CROSSED.


Every part of a pro-choicer being against Sex-selective abortions goes against the very concept of Women having the choice because what you're basiclly advocating for is limiting the motivations women can have for their abortions. If women have to justify to you guys why they're having an abortion than it's not their choice.


As a Pro-life advocate(Who's an atheist) it seems weird to see pro-choicers argue against legal abortions when they don't agree with the motivation Or more specifically when the motivation doesn't benifit the pro-female argue feminist try to make.

Why should the sex "of a blob of cells" even matter to pro-choicers?

I don't usally argue about social issues but something about this obvious contradiction infuriates me.

Even though I'm pro-life, I wouldn't favor this bill.

(1) In this country, a woman can have an abortion for any reason she wants (or for no reason at all). I absolutely don't approve of that, but who says "I don't want a boy"/"I don't want a girl" is any different from "I don't want a baby" (regardless of gender)? Other than life-of-mother, all of the "reasons" for abortion are equally unacceptable to me, and I don't want to send a message that (a) reason X is "better" than reason Y or (b) "it's OK as long as you don't abort a little girl!"

(2) It's not like a woman seeking an abortion actually has to provide a reason to the abortionist (although one could argue that that ought to be changed). If someone is aborting her child because of the child's sex, they aren't going to mention it anyway.

(3) I don't like the rhetoric (on both sides used here). Those individuals who favor a woman's right to abort also condemn countries like China, where girls are being aborted. (Note Mr. Franks' remark about little girls being aborted, as opposed to the fact that sex-selective abortion is happening at all.) Although the reverse situation is rare, something tells me fewer people would care if the situation were indeed reversed.

It won't cause any de facto change in the legality of abortion (again, women can always make up, or for that matter not reveal, a reason).

Sure I agree with everything you just posted, but if you're pro-life, shouldn't you support pretty much any abortion restriction you can come up with? Sure this might only stop like one or two women a year but isn't that better than nothing?

False, I see no reason why parents shouldn't be allowed to determine what child they'd like to raise. If they don't want to have a daughter, they shouldn't be forced to come up with a different justification from the government as to why they want to have an abortion. Explain to me how this position comes from thoughtless behavior.

Surely you know that I don't mean a pure form of utilitarianism. It's a form of utilitarianism that reaches a certain ends that is amenable to progressive principles.

No, it wouldn't. If a woman is really going to have her baby aborted (for any reason), she won't be asked ("Are you here for an illegal reason?"), and if she is asked, she'll just come up with some other reason, like, say, "I didn't want my parents to know I got knocked up", or, if the child has Down syndrome, "I don't want the burden of an abnormal child."

It would also send the wrong message from a pro-life perspective. If you are genuinely pro-life, you can't support the legality of abortion for any reason, except perhaps for life-of-mother. Again, I think this law would effectively say "as long as you aren't aborting a little girl, it's okay" and "reason X is better than reason Y" (when in fact I reject both reasons, and I don't want to endorse either one, even in a relative sense). Finally, these reasons are effectively the same from a moral perspective. In all of these cases, a child is being aborted because it is inconvenient to its mother (and, in the case of sex selection and Down syndrome, because it has an inconvenient set of chromosomes).

That wasn't exactly what I was getting at, but whatever.

Bleating about 'choice' as though that's an end to itself and magically eliminates all potential ethical problems (and this goes for every other issue that this sort of dribbly liberal idiocy is wheeled out for; which is almost everything) is thoughtless by definition. Although I don't agree with them, strong arguments for lax abortion laws do exist, but they tend not to be so utterly dependent on such a fundamentally juvenile attitude.


Then why even use the word?


Sorry, but that's just dross. Read it out loud to yourself.

What's that nice Peguy quote again: 'We shall never know how many acts of cowardice have been commited for fear of not appearing sufficiently progressive.'?

As I said before, I'm pro-choice, period, regardless of if it's a bad choice.  In the case of sex-selective abortion, it might very well be, but "abortion should be legal for X bad reason" is a subset of "Abortion should be legal."

Not if the Bill would preclude, or potentially preclude, "choosing" to abort a fetus in the first trimester for any reason or no reason.

Btw, I agree with Al that there is more to the puzzle than the right to make a "choice." For some, a fetus at some point just seems - well - a bit too human. And therein lies almost everything really come to think of it. When or when is a fetus just a bit too much like us for our own comfort in our own little sense of what being a human means? On that one, it really is all about subjective "choice."

Of course, if you are a misanthrope ...

I would support it for the symbolism, but it is obviously unenforceable.

Then that goes towards the timing and not the reasoning but may go towards the method.