OPINION: Ban Sex-selective Abortions, in the U.S.

"I propose that we--the pro-life movement--adopt as our next goal the banning of sex-selective abortion."

FRONT ROYAL, Va. (Catholic Online) - Female infanticide has been practiced in China for a very long time. A thousand years before the birth of Christ, the Chinese were already prizing their sons--and scorning their daughters. New parents were counseled, in the words of a well-known poem from the ancient Book of Songs:

"When a son is born
Let him sleep on the bed,
Clothe him with fine clothes.
And give him jade to play with. ...

When a daughter is born,
Let her sleep on the ground,
Wrap her in common wrappings,
And give her broken tiles for playthings."

Such unequal treatment of the sexes, which went beyond clothing and shelter to include food and medical care, had the intended result: Little girls died of malnutrition, disease and exposure in much greater numbers than their coddled brothers. Some Chinese parents, as everyone knows, were not content to let nature take its course. Rather, reading the second verse with deadly literalness, they wrapped their newborn girl in rags and left her by the side of the road to "sleep on the ground" forever.

Centuries later, this strong preference for sons persists not only in China, but in other countries influenced by the Confucian tradition, such as Vietnam and Korea. The Hindus in India likewise regarded sons as treasures and daughters as expendable. But it was in China itself, because of the one-child policy, that this practice first came to the attention of the West.

When China's one-child per family policy was introduced in 1980 it gave new impetus to the heinous practice of female infanticide, by making birth into a kind of one-shot Russian roulette. Have a boy, and you celebrate the continuation of your family line and the arrival of your old age pension. Have a girl, and all of your hopes for the future die. Virtually overnight female infanticide reached epidemic proportions in many parts of China. The Beijing regime belatedly attempted to correct the problem several years later by relaxing the one-child policy in the countryside. From 1986 on, rural couples whose first child is a girl have been allowed to have a second child. Don't kill first-born baby girls was the unspoken message of this policy shift.

Female infanticide continued, albeit at a lower level. But a new threat appeared on the horizon. The arrival of the ultrasound machine put baby girls at risk before they were born. It was clear to me from the outset that the primary use of such machines in China would be to determine the sex of the unborn child, allowing the selective elimination of females. This is why I testified before the Australian Senate in 1989 that shipping ultrasound machines to China was a bad idea. "The machines may be intended by the Australian government to improve prenatal health care," I testified, "but on the ground in China they will be used on search and destroy missions for unborn baby girls."

Parents with a strong preference for sons are now enabled by technology to act on their on their preferences. Both ultrasound and amniocentesis can easily identify the sex of a fetus, and sex-selective abortion has become an everyday practice. New technology, of course, is not the only factor; in some rural areas in China and elsewhere, old-fashioned female infanticide still lingers.

Sex selective abortion in China and other Asian countries has reached epidemic proportions. More than 100 million females are now missing from the populations of India and China, while millions more have disappeared from neighboring populations. The violence of abortion, especially of sex-selective abortion, is making the world a more dangerous place in many ways. In China, the superabundance of unmarried males has already resulted in a more violent society, as organized crime, terrorism, prostitution and homosexuality flourish.

But these problems are not limited to Asia. Sex-selective abortion is also practiced in the U.S., albeit on a smaller scale. Immigrant populations of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Indians bring with them their cultural preference for boys, and the ready availability of both ultrasound and abortion enables them to eliminate baby girls in utero. I have seen an advertisement where an abortionist advertised to pregnant women that he could guarantee that they gave birth to their preferred sex. That promise could only be kept by wielding the knife against the unpreferred sex.

We now have statistical evidence for sex selective abortion as well. Looking at data from the 2000 U.S Census, researchers Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund noticed a strange phenomenon. The U.S.-born children of Chinese, Korean, and Asian Indian parents tended to be male. The researchers called this "son-biased sex ratios." Taking their study a step further, they considered the effect of birth order. First-born children of Asians showed normal sex ratios at birth, roughly 106 girls for every 100 boys. If the first child was a son, the sex ratio of the second-born children was also normal.

But what happened if the first child was a girl? The second child tended to be a boy. Almond and Edlund found that "This male bias is particularly evident for third children: If there was no previous son, sons outnumbered daughters by 50%." That means that, for every 150 boys, there were only 100 hundred surviving girls. The rest had been eliminated.The authors quite rightly interpret this "deviation in favor of sons" the only way they possibly could, namely, as "evidence of sex selection, most likely at the prenatal stage." In other words, as early as a decade ago, Asian-American communities in the U.S. were already practicing sex-selective abortion.

Similar sex imbalances have also been documented among Canada's Asian immigrant communities. The Toronto Globe & Mail reported that "Figures from the 2001 census supplied by Statistics Canada suggest a slight skew in the usual gender ratio among people with South Asian backgrounds. . . . According to the 2001 census data, the proportion of girls under 15 in the South Asian communities of Mississauga and Brampton is two percentage points below the ratio for the rest of the population in those municipalities."

Sex-selective abortion is rightly seen by many as the ultimate form of discrimination against women. Overwhelming numbers of Americans oppose the practice. According to 2006 Zogby/USA Today poll, 86% would like to see it banned.Yet, at present, it remains legal in the U.S. to abort a child for any and all reasons, including the fact that she happens to be a little girl.Sex-selective abortions should be banned in the U.S.

On the question of abortion, I am an abolitionist. I believe that our founding documents speak to the sanctity of life, and that a Human Life Amendment protecting the unborn should be passed by Congress and ratified by the states. But twelve years in Washington have taught me, among other things, to count. And the votes necessary to amend the Constitution simply aren't there. Would that they were.

Instead, in recent years the pro-life movement has sought to pass legislation banning particularly heinous forms of abortion, such as partial birth abortion. Professor Hadley Arkes' Born Alive Infant Protection Act is another magnificent example of this legislative approach. The absolute numbers of babies that will be saved is not great in either instance, but both have served to move public opinion in a pro-life direction. The debate over partial birth abortion helped to uncover the ugly reality behind such euphemisms as "the termination of pregnancy" and "choice." The Born Alive Infant Protection Act forced abortion supporters to defend the indefensible: the killing of abortion survivors after birth in the name of "choice."

Some would disparage this kind of incremental approach, thinking that we should only mobilize our forces for total victory, and that working for anything less undermines our larger prospects, and is even, somehow, dishonorable. But politics is the art of the possible, and we should never, when it comes to protecting the unborn, let the perfect be the enemy of the good. As Robert George recently wrote in "Families and First Principles," National Review, February 12, 2007, at p. 34: "The goal must be to accomplish in law and policy all that can be accomplished in the prevailing circumstances, while working to move public opinion in the directions more respectful of human life so as to make possible further advances in law and policy. Indeed, it is the small victories in the political domain that help get public opinion moving in the right direction, thus establishing the conditions for greater achievements."

Bearing all this in mind, I propose that we--the pro-life movement--adopt as our next goal the banning of sex-selective abortion. By formally protecting all female fetuses from abortion on ground of their sex, we would plant in the law the proposition that the developing child is a being whose claims on us should not depend on their sex.

Banning sex-selective abortion will force supporters of abortion to publicly address a question that they will find profoundly disturbing: Is the right to abortion a license to destroy children for any and all reasons, including that of their sex? Most people of moderate persuasion, even those inclined to be "pro-choice," will agree that the right of the unborn child to life should not depend on whether she (or he) possesses the requisite genitalia. Even those who believe in the absolute right to destroy the child under any and all circumstances, it is safe to predict, will be uncomfortable defending such an extreme position.

This sense of contradiction will be further heightened among radical feminists, the shock troops of the abortion movement. They may believe that the right to abortion is fundamental to women's emancipation, but many will recoil at the thought of aborting their unborn sisters. How can they, who so oppose patriarchy and discrimination on the basis of sex, consent to the ultimate form of patriarchy and discrimination, namely, the elimination of baby girls solely on account of their sex? Many will be silent, while others will defend abortion with less conviction.

While the pro-aborts are stuttering, we pro-lifers will be advancing new moral and logical arguments against the exercise of the "right" to an abortion solely on the grounds of sex. For those who are immune to moral arguments, we can also use the examples of China and India, where sex-selective abortion is creating enormous societal problems. We can also highlight the trivial reasons that drive most abortions by highlighting the most frivolous of them all. The debate over sex-selective abortion will also help to focus the public's attention on how unregulated the abortion industry is. In these and other ways, the debate over this legislation will not subtract from, but add to, the larger goal of reversing Roe v. Wade.

Steven W. Mosher is the President of the Population Research Institute and the author of Population Control: Real Costs and Illusory Benefits.he is a frequent contributor to Catholic Online

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