gender abortion

[dead0man]

uhhhhh....GO!

[Goldwater]

It's horrible, but laws based on controlling peoples reasons for doing things are generally intrusive and ineffective, so it should be legal.

[BaconBacon96]

I think that's a disgusting reason to get an abortion. Personally I wouldn't mind it being banned, but since I consider myself strongly pro-choice otherwise, I'm not sure how the law should be on this.

[anvi]

I'm not sure which option to choose from in the list.  I'm pro-choice in many circumstances, but there should be some restrictions on abortion, and this is definitely one of them. 

[Flake]

It really wouldn't be enforceable.

[angus]

yes.

I know it takes about 20 weeks to be able to determine this, so some will have qualms with it, but I don't think I have a problem with mid-term abortions.

There is an obvious downside.  In China, which has a long record of sex selection, 30 million more men than women will reach adulthood and enter China's mating market by 2020.  This can have some pretty severe consequences.   Young men with poor prospects may discount their futures and take ridiculous risks in order to improve their prospects. They also become more violent, rising more readily to perceived slights and insults, and starting more fights. These are the triggers for most man-on-man assaults and homicides.  Still, I'm not against abortion generally and in the United States we don't really have a long history of valuing boys more than girls so I don't think it will be a long-term problem here. 

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

I'm not sure which option to choose from in the list.  I'm pro-choice in many circumstances, but there should be some restrictions on abortion, and this is definitely one of them. 

I chose option 3, but this.^^^

[Oakvale]

I believe women should be allowed get abortions. This includes getting abortions for dubious reasons.

How could this possibly be legislated against, anyway?

[angus]

American parents often want exactly two children, one of each gender.  A recent Gallup poll showed that about 54% of Americans think that the ideal number of children is 2.  20% say 3, 7% say 1, 5% say 4, and the numbers get smaller from there.  Also, when I talk to people they invariably say they want one of each gender.  I would therefore conclude that if complete sexual selection were possible and convenient, then most couples would have one of each, and we would eventually have a roughly 1-to-1 birth ratio of males to females.  

It might be worth noting that differences exist in ideals placed upon their children by parents.  A cursory google search turns up hundreds of hits.  For example, Seth Stephens of the NYT reports that the most popular desire for parents of boys is that the boy be smart and the most popular desire for girls is for the girl to be thin.  (You thought I was going to say pretty, didn't you?  Oddly, it was thin, not pretty.)  In a recent study of internet search data, he found that the most common question asked by parents of girls was "Is my daughter overweight?"  In fact, "Is my daughter overweight?" is 1.9 times as frequent as "Is my son overweight?"  On the other hand, "Is my son a genius?" comes up about 2.5 times as frequently as "Is my daughter a genius?"

The smart boy question I can understand.  It comes from billions of generations of biological endeavor.  Some people reproduce and some don't, but everyone who is alive today is descended from sexually successful ancestors.  For a male, that success comes from acquiring material.  For a female, that success comes from domesticity and the ability to beguile men.  Those traits get passed on to offspring, so after a few hundred thousand years, all males become a little more aggressive than their ancestors, and all females are a little more beguiling and nurturing.  If you're a king, it is simply because your male ancestors were better at stealing stuff than other men.  But it is also because your female ancestors were better at beguiling men than other women.  

The thin girl question is a little harder to understand.  It would stand to reason that a large bulbous buttocks and big breasts would attract men, instinctively, if the men had not lost their animal instinct to impregnate the women most likely to bear healthy children.  I'll have to think about that one a little more.  In any case, parents do ask different questions about their children.

I've also observed, anecdotally, that some potential parents have definite preferences with regard to the gender of their children.  Unlike India and China, however, the US parents don't seem to skew one way.  I hear people say that they want a girl almost as often as I hear them say that they want a boy.  If my analysis is correct, then allowing complete freedom of sexual selection is not likely to lead to the dire consequences that China has been experiencing, of and on, since female infanticide first became popular during the Qing Dynasty in the mid-19th century.

To be fair, there is some anecdotal data from the National Bureau of Economic Research that men prefer boys.  For example, divorced fathers are about 20% more likely to fight for custody of their sons than for their daughters, there may be some truth to that.  I could find no corroborating research so it doesn't seem to be a widely-studied phenomenon.  Still, it seems worth mentioning.  Also, a 2011 Gallup article reported that Americans preferred boys over girls by about 40% to 30%, with about 30% saying that it doesn't matter.  This same poll has been done about ten times since 1940 with identical results each time, so there may be some slight preference for one gender over the other.  NewParent magazine reports that 54% of couples prefer a boy over a girl.  If we make some assumptions about family size, the percent of women who for moral or other reasons would not terminate a pregnancy under the circumstances, and take into account Gallup's poll numbers as well as NewParent in a non-weighted average, we can estimate that there might be about 1.05 males born per female in the United States.  That is not insignificant, but it does not compare to the situation in China.  Moreover, given cultural differences as well as differences in economic and geographic mobility, I don't think the manifestations of the ratio would be as destabilizing or as violent in the US as in China, although I do think it might lead to greater sexual promiscuity among young US females.  

Just food for thought.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Morally wrong  but a specific ban on it would be completely unenforceable.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

I believe women should be allowed get abortions. This includes getting abortions for dubious reasons.

How could this possibly be legislated against, anyway?

It can't.  And most of us agree with your first sentence, which is why this topic is an interesting one, since it adds shades of gray to the views of those who believe the woman should be allowed to get them freely up to a certain point.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There are things that can been done to limit it, actually.

[angus]

I need to revise my earlier estimate.  I think it might actually be more like 1.02 males to every female, not 1.05, in the case of legal sexual selection, and even that I think is a greatest-case scenario.  I base this on the fact that it is only in the single-child family that we need to take this into account, because I have been reading that for the two-child family couples would overwhelmingly choose one of each, and because of the demographics of those who choose three or more as ideal do not generally fall into the category of those likely to terminate based on gender.  Thus, I am even more convinced that no additional social or political problems are created if people choose to terminate pregnancies based solely on the gender of the fetus. 

If you are against second-term abortions, I can respect that, and I can understand a no vote here.  But if you are not, then I find it hard to see this as a special disqualifying case.  People get abortions for all sorts of reasons, mostly economic, and this reason is no better or worse than the others.  Moreover, attempting to control it will only create additional problems because we will end up creating a questionnaire which encourages people to lie.  "You can terminate the pregnancy for this reason or that reason, but you may not terminate for these reasons.  Please select a reason."  That will only add to the burdensome bureaucracy that encourages people to distrust government.  Such encouragement is likely only to further destabilize or demoralize the society.  Also, it's just creepy to think that we need some moral police service that wants to know why you are doing the things that you're doing, and deciding the legality of those actions based upon the reasons.

[TNF]

A woman should be allowed to get an abortion for whatever reason she wants. I have no right to interfere with that, and neither does the state.

[angus]

I have no right to interfere with that, and neither does the state.

Actually, it does if it has a compelling interest in doing so.  I just can't find one.  It is important to remember that rules exist to keep people safe, and since such a law would not benefit public safety it is not justifiable.  Also, there may be some undesirable unintended consequences of attempting to enforce such restrictions.  Of course, I haven't spent a career or a lifetime analyzing this problem, but from an hour's worth of browsing of the available data, I conclude that it is not likely that significant socioeconomic problems will arise as a result of sex-selection of babies.

I appreciate the question, though.  We have had something like a thousand threads concerning abortion.  Usually I avoid them, because those who feel that it should be illegal reach that conclusion because of deeply-held moral convictions and I have neither the inclination nor the ability to try to change their minds, and those who have no ethical qualms with abortions similarly will not be convinced of the need to restrict access to them.  Both positions are valid and honorable and generally self-consistent, but they are obviously at odds so debate often leads to intractable argument.  However, this thread asks a different sort of question.  It is very specific, and it seems to suggest that we should look at the possible society-wide consequences of allowing parents to freely select the gender of their babies.  All the evidence seems to suggest that this would lead to a very slight increase in the boy-to-girl birth ratio, but not to an extent that would cause society to crumble.

[DC Al Fine]

I believe women should be allowed get abortions. This includes getting abortions for dubious reasons.

How could this possibly be legislated against, anyway?

It can't.  And most of us agree with your first sentence, which is why this topic is an interesting one, since it adds shades of gray to the views of those who believe the woman should be allowed to get them freely up to a certain point.

You'd pretty much have to ban abortion after it's possible to tell the baby's gender. If angus is correct, that would be @ 20 weeks.

[TDAS04]

It's horrible, but laws based on controlling peoples reasons for doing things are generally intrusive and ineffective, so it should be legal.

[Supersonic]

No, it's horrendous. Irrespective of the difficulties of enforcing such laws.

[IceSpear]

Anyone who would do this is a horrible person, but unfortunately it would be unenforceable since I doubt they'd be dumb enough to admit that's the reason they want one.

[AggregateDemand]

I'm pro-choice, but if this becomes a thing in the US, we'd have to consider outlawing abortion and relying entirely on contraceptives.

[Linus Van Pelt]

I believe women should be allowed get abortions. This includes getting abortions for dubious reasons.

How could this possibly be legislated against, anyway?

It can't.  And most of us agree with your first sentence, which is why this topic is an interesting one, since it adds shades of gray to the views of those who believe the woman should be allowed to get them freely up to a certain point.

You'd pretty much have to ban abortion after it's possible to tell the baby's gender. If angus is correct, that would be @ 20 weeks.

While the 20-week ultrasound is the point at which gender is traditionally found out in a normal low-risk pregnancy, it can be found out earlier through amniocentesis or CVS. These do involve some increased risk of miscarriage since they involve inserting instruments into the uterus to extract material.

Now, one could just ban prenatal gender disclosure, without banning abortion after a specific time period. Granted, it might be difficult to create a culture of compliance among the medical profession when parents liked to ask. (It's never too clear to me whether the notion of a law being "unenforceable" is supposed to include cultural factors like that, since in some sense any law is enforceable only when people are willing to enforce it.)

[angus]

Lots of bending and stretching in that plan, Linus.  Even if CVS is a pharmacy three blocks from my house.

I respect those who are against abortion in all cases, and I respect those who would allow it in all circumstances.  On the other hand, I really never understood the mentality that concludes that at 11:59 PM on day 100 terminating an abortion is hunky dory, but at 12:01 AM on day 101 it is a horrible crime against humanity.  If I do something now and it's okay, you can't tell me that two minutes from now it should be a crime.  I simply never could get my mind around that logic.  And that's the logic upon which your plan would be built.  I cannot support it.  Nor can I support the implication that disallowing communication between the obstetrician and the patient regarding all aspects of the pregnancy, including the gender of the baby, is in anyone's best interest.

What I can support is the broader issue of investigating whether we might approve, as a society, of allowing parents to choose the sex of the child.  (Maybe it's a good idea; maybe not, and I could probably be swayed either way, but at the moment I'm leaning toward it being okay and I'm really not seeing any intelligent argument against it.)  In some distant future that choice might involve the pregnant person taking a pill or subjecting herself to some electromagnetic radiation.  That technology is not currently available.  Right now, the best you could do to choose the sex of your offspring is to get pregnant and have the gender determined in the normal, low-risk way.  If it's the gender you want, fine.  Carry the pregnancy to term.  If it's not, then terminate and try again later.  Maybe you could also use old auntie Zha Zha's special evil-eye gulash recipe to help influence the gender.  

In any case, we needn't be in the business of legislating morality.  The question can and, in my opinion, should come down to this:  does allowing parents to decide the gender of their offspring, no matter the technology or method, have any negative long-term socioeconomic consequence?  I am increasingly convinced that it will not.  If I am right, then there is no justifiable reason to prohibit parents from doing that.  Whether or not you find abortion generally offensive is a separate issue, and I can respect those who think that it's evil no matter what, but if you have no qualms with abortion generally, then it's really hard to make a philosophically coherent argument favoring its restriction specifically with regard to deciding the offspring's gender unless you can show that such allowances will lead to a destabilization of the culture or of the economy.

[Wake Me Up When The Hard Border Ends]

Given that I'm pro-life, I'm obviously against gender selective abortion.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Lots of bending and stretching in that plan, Linus.  Even if CVS is a pharmacy three blocks from my house.

I respect those who are against abortion in all cases, and I respect those who would allow it in all circumstances.  On the other hand, I really never understood the mentality that concludes that at 11:59 PM on day 100 terminating an abortion is hunky dory, but at 12:01 AM on day 101 it is a horrible crime against humanity.  If I do something now and it's okay, you can't tell me that two minutes from now it should be a crime.  I simply never could get my mind around that logic.  And that's the logic upon which your plan would be built.  I cannot support it.  Nor can I support the implication that disallowing communication between the obstetrician and the patient regarding all aspects of the pregnancy, including the gender of the baby, is in anyone's best interest.

I do not actually advocate this proposal I described, just to be clear. I was merely pointing out that it was a possibility for those who wanted to ban sex-selective abortions.

CVS is definitely not three blocks from my house. Out here, as you may remember from your Iowa days, the terrain is dominated by Walgreens.

[angus]

Ah, yes, Walgreens.  I do remember them being more plentiful in the Midwest.  We have those here too. 

I noticed CVS in Massachusetts, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania.  Can't recall ever seeing one in Iowa.  Actually, in the part of Iowa where I lived, HyVee had a huge number of pharmacies.  I actually liked them very much, and I miss the level of service we encountered there.  In fact, generally speaking, in all aspects of medical service, the situation was better in Iowa than in Pennsylvania.  Overall I like it better here, but in that aspect it's better in the Midwest.