Sex-Selective Abortion
FreiFem2011credit: Joe Marinaro
A few years after I drifted away from the religious community, whenever an ambulance wailed by me, I found that I was still thinking: May they be going to deliver a healthy Jewish boy.
A boy?
I don’t know if I’ve ever heard an overt statement in the religious community that boy babies are better than girl babies, but every single story I was ever told as a child, about God saving a childless couple, ended with: and a year later, they had a healthy baby boy!
A boy? Never a girl?
It’s a preference that’s much more strongly articulated in some Asian countries, where female fetuses are sometimes aborted – or worse. Stories abound of Chinese midwives bringing water to a birth – to wash up, if the baby was a boy, to drown the child, if it was a girl.
Now there’s a new blood test that claims it can accurately predict the sex of an embryo at seven weeks, and some people are afraid this will dramatically increase the rates of sex selective abortion.
Do you think that’s a problem?
It concerns me – it perpetuates a degradation of females and, in large numbers, could contribute to frightening sex inequalities and imbalances and social problems. But, at the same time, I certainly have no problem with individuals trying various conception tricks (diets, timing of conception etc) to push their luck towards one sex or the other. What’s the difference?
I guess for me, I believe a seven week embryo has some (small) right to life. Treading into other, complicated territory, even though I’m an ardent feminist, I have cautious attitudes towards abortion without medical or emotional cause. Although even here, my reasoning fails me – for some families, having a girl comes at a significant emotional cost….
I’m left with more questions than answers. Ethics without God is complicated.
5 Responses
I would think that that the question is really about abortion in general (i.e. if we agree that abortion in general can be moral, how do we determine in what cases it may not be so).
Personally, I think that abortion should be completely up to the mother (leaving the issue of late-term abortion aside for now), and therefore, I don’t have any problem with the mother’s reasoning – whatever it may be – for wanting the abortion.
On a practical level, the obvious problem is: how do we really know if the mother really has full say? In many cases, others (husband, parents, community) may have a significant amount of control over her choice – and, unfortunately, I can think of no way to control that. The sad reality is that our world is a pretty rotten place, and vast numbers of people find themselves in situations that are far from ideal. I can only hope that the “traditional” societies fade into the annals of history and people can continue to evolve and progress in a positive way.
(BTW, as a man, I feel that I must go on record stating that I have preferred that my children be girls.)
“Ethics without God is complicated.”
Ethics with God is complicated as well. In fact, I entered the skeptic world precisely because I did not find religion to have black and white answers.
Gutman Braun – It is an issue of abortion – but I’ve always found abortion to be much more complex than the major trumpeted perspectives- pro-choice or pro-life– seem to posit. Different circumstances offer different lenses to view different perspectives of the complicated issue. And here’s another one – NYTimes magazine this weekend features an article on the ethics and practice of abortion of one of two babies in a twin pregnancy – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/magazine/the-two-minus-one-pregnancy.html?_r=1&ref=magazine
Interesting article, although I must admit that I don’t completely get it…
Let me put it this way: I am pro-abortion. This means that I do not find abortion inherently reprehensible (morally or ethically). I think that the right to abortion is good for society, good for families and good for the world.
To expand on the idea – philosophically, I think that a woman should be in full control of her body and that she has the moral and ethical right to determine what is best for her. I do not distinguish between her and a separate fetus with its own rights (again, I’m speaking in general and not addressing “late-term” abortion – which I find far more troubling). Furthermore, I think that the mother knows best what is best for her and her prospective child’s future. As I see it, an unwanted child is not a good idea – whatever her reasons.
Now, if we’re talking about the emotional risks as result of (or the emotional motives behind) this decision, that’s a different matter altogether – but as far as the ethics of it? I do think that it pretty-much does come down to the pro-abortion vs anti-abortion argument. And, I think that those who place a stigma on it are influenced by the general religious thinking that exists in society.
With all that said, I would agree that it can become a significant societal problem if we put ourselves in a predicament where there are two boys to every girl (or vice-versa) – but (at least until we start to see a crisis of that type) on an individual basis, I feel that it’s not my place to interfere in the mother’s choice. Obviously, I expect that the woman will discuss and consider the ramifications with her doctor, her significant other, etc, so that she is best equipped to make an informed decision.
Years ago, I read a short story in a sci fi anthology in which a female reporter traveled to the Middle East. In the story a sex-selective abortion pill had been invented a few decades ago, and women in the Middle East tended to take the pills that would abort girls. The result was that women had to have bodyguards wherever they went – their scarcity made them valuable and prone to kidnapping and rape. Middle Eastern countries saw the west as feminine and overrun with women because the West had normal ratios of men to women while in the Middle East men almost never saw a woman.
It sounds plausible.