House Debates Banning Sex-Selective Abortions

[RIP Robert H Bork]

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).

[RIP Robert H Bork]

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?

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).