meghadutam ([info]meghadutam) wrote in [info]feminist,
2006-01-09 14:58:00
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Sex Selective Abortion

My first post here.

A little context. I am in my mid-20s. I have been born, brought up, buttered and bread in India and recently moved to the UK. I have been working in the sector Women and Children's Development for some years now. Prompted by this article on the BBC today(Sex-Selective Abortion Triggers), I was doing a post on my blog - when I found myself face to face with an issue that has come to hit me on my head quite often.

I am a staunch Pro-Choice person. And have never been two-ways about it. But understanding sex-selective abortion as female foeticide is a tricky subject - because in terms of semantics - foeticide assumes that you are killing a foetus (a very Pro-Life stand). i.e. A foetus has "life". However, being pro-choice I do not buy that argument.

I like to think in terms of "rights", because then they are not contextual. Abortion is any woman's right over her own body. Whose right is taken away when it comes to sex-selective abortion? If I say that it takes away the Right to Life from a girl who had the chance of being born - then I buy into the Pro-Life argument. (Which I WON'T).

So here's my question - When I say that Sex-Selective Abortion takes away a person's right to life because of their being female rather than being male, i.e to say that the chances to live are less equal because of biological sex - does it make sense to you?

Edit 1 - However, when a person is denied the Right to Life because of their sex - in any manner - be it abortion, murder, poor quality of diet - then it is WRONG. Does that make sense to you? i.e Your chances of existence should not be comprised by your sex.

(I am sorry for the rant-like nature of this post - The semantics are driving me up the wall!)

Edit 2 - Would you be okay with sex determination being banned when women are undergoing sonography tests? So while abortion remains a right, sex-selection is not a possibility? (Apologies to the moderator - this was to be a part of the post - and adds tonnes more context to the issue.)

Edit 3 - After reading a few comments - I am suddenly aware that I assumed a greater knowledge of the context of India. Most women may not be going in for the sex-selective abortions through free-will, and instead are likely to be forced to terminate the pregnancy. They could be forced through physical, emotional or financial means.

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  • 30 comments

[info]savestheworld

January 9 2006, 15:35:11 UTC 6 years ago

i was having the exact same debate in my head today because of the same article.
i say it should be legal, but it doesn't fit into my system of ethics. i'm especially concerned about the way women are treated when the male to female ratio becomes so skewed

[info]transformergeek

January 9 2006, 15:36:28 UTC 6 years ago

It really doesn't make sense to me, because you're saying that a fetus does not have life, but then you're saying that this certain kind of abortion takes away a person's right to life. I don't think you can have it both ways.

I have an unpopular view on abortion that I'd like to explain here to illustrate my opinion on the argument.

I believe a fetus is a living thing. I really don't see how this point can be argued. I'm not saying that it isn't dependent on the mother or that it deserves full status as a person. I'm simply saying that it is a unique organism due to the fact that is has it's own DNA, separate from the mothers. I'll even go a step further (and this is the unpopular part) and say that I think a fetus is a human. If you took the DNA from a fetus, gave it to someone to examine, and asked them where it came from without telling them where you got it, they would respond that it belongs to a homo sapien.

That being said, I do believe that abortion is ending a human life. And I don't have a problem with that.

But there is more to being human than biology. However, I believe what makes us human (in a philosophical sense, rather than a purely biological sense) is our life experiences and our memories. I believe that's the main difference between being a just a human and being a person. So in the sense that a fetus has no perspective of life outside the mother's womb, and during most of the pregnancy has practically no sensory perception, it would be ludicrous to say that this mass of cells (even though I consider it to be alive, and in some sense "human") should be afforded the same rights as an actual person.

So, now that I can push semantics aside (which also drive me insane from time to time), yes, I believe that it is morally wrong to abort a fetus because of the sex, but that doesn't have anything to do with making any judgmentss on the abortion itself, it's making a judgments on the fact that the person wanting the abortion values one sex higher than the other. So, to me, the issue isn't really about the abortion as much as it is about the fact that the person is making a statement that women aren't as good as men.

I hope that made some sense as I am horribly sleep deprived.

[info]killgirlswatch

January 9 2006, 16:21:14 UTC 6 years ago

I don't think anybody is going to say that a fetus is not human or living. If they do, well...they're not very smart. It's not a dead alien species in there.

[info]peace_corps_grl

6 years ago

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[info]transformergeek

6 years ago

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[info]killgirlswatch

6 years ago

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[info]rocketgeek

6 years ago

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[info]fierceawakening

January 9 2006, 19:11:45 UTC 6 years ago

I'm not sure anyone disagrees with that. Personally, I think that fetuses do have some degree of moral value. I just think that whatever regard we ought to have for them is nothing that can be compared to the interests of a woman, who is a person.

[info]route_venusa

January 10 2006, 01:45:56 UTC 6 years ago

Well said. For me, a fetus is not just a bundle of cells-- it is a lifeform that has the potential to become a full-fledged human being. However, it is dependent on the woman and is a part of her body-- thus it is her choice to end the life or not. With that said, I don't see abortion as either moral or immoral-- it is a choice w/o any inherent moral value.

[info]amphibian23

January 9 2006, 15:37:21 UTC 6 years ago

Yes, it does make sense to me. The misogyny that this practice is a symptom of can't be obscured by a woman's right to choose, which, as you say, is a right so the context is irrelevant. As for the second paragraph. Is the more important distinction between those who regard a foetus' life as equal to a human being's, and those who don't? Or between those who see the foetus' 'right' to live as more important than the mother's right to choose, and those who agree that it's vital that a woman has control over her own womb?

[info]naath

January 9 2006, 15:39:13 UTC 6 years ago

I don't see a problem with a *individual* making this choice, it's her choice whether to have a)a child and b)this child. However when a large % of a population make this choice then there is a problem, and it's not a problem of the 'right to life' of each individual aborted foetus but rather a demographic problem for society.

Also there's the problem of *why* are women chosing to abort girls and not boys - it appears to me that it's because sons are highly valued but daughters are not, this is, in itself regardles of sex-selective abortion or infanticide, a problem. The 'value' of daughters can in some sense be monitered by the rate of sex-selective-abortion, giving us a handle on the problem.

I don't think that the solution is to ban sex selective abortion but rather to 'treat' the problem of undervalueing daughters (and women in general) within a society.

Also, sex selective abortion has the beneficial effect of reducing the number of women in the next generation and therefore subsequently reducing the number of children born, resulting in a population decline (you have to decrease the number of women as it is the number of child bearing women that provides a limit to the number of children born). Population is clearly Too Large in some areas of the world, and this is *a* solution - there are clearly others.

So whilst 'we' (for apropriate values of we) look for solutions to the cultural views about women (I am certainly not the apropriate person to suggest what those solutions might be) I think that sex-selective abortion isn't something that needs to be restricted directly (ie by banning it) and that doing so can only be harmfull, both to the pro-choice cause and to the women involved (who will possibly chose unsafe ways to abort) and to unwanted daughters who will be born as a result (who may be killed or if allowed to live abused as a result of being unwanted).

[info]naath

January 9 2006, 15:42:27 UTC 6 years ago

Further thought... there are problems with a society with such a squeued demographic, asside from the resulting and desirable low birth rate. If there are insuficient women available to marry (suposing that at least some of the women desire to marry) then women are more likely to become a traded commodity - bad for the women involved and also in young women/girls being married off to older men who are unable to find a wife their own age.

[info]miz_kitty

January 9 2006, 15:53:58 UTC 6 years ago

You might find this an interesting read.

[info]killgirlswatch

January 9 2006, 16:22:56 UTC 6 years ago

While I don't like the idea of sex-selective abortion, I also think that we should never ask a woman why she is aborting and it is not her obligation to say, either.

I guess don't take a stand on the whole issue.

[info]hailebop

January 9 2006, 16:36:36 UTC 6 years ago

Urgh, I wrote a paper on this topic before Christmas, and when I needed them there were no recent articles on the BBC on it. Typical.

I found it very hard to reconcile being pro-choice with the problem of sex-selective abortion. I want to say that a woman's choice whether she wants to continue a pregnancy or not must be up to her and nobody else, but when thousands of individual choices to terminate pregnancies solely because the foetus is female... these individual choices add up so there is a significant gap in the population because of misogynitstic attitudes, and it's frightening and feels like something we as Feminists should be challenging.

You could argue that this isn't about abortion specfically, it's about the reasons behind why women or couples are choosing to abort female foetuses. You could argue that the reasons for seeking abortion, that one sex is preferred, is the immoral thing, not the actual act of aborting a female foetus, although this leads you into difficult territory of there being "good" and "bad" reasons for seeking abortions. Allowing this trend to continue (though of course it's very difficult to stop because of the huge economic and cultural factors) means that women in society continue to be undervalued and thought of as commodities. The lack of women in some provinces in India has already lead to a huge increase in trafficked women. from other countries for example, and attitudes that women are inferior fuel violence against women too.

It is difficult though. I don't know about banning sex determination during pregnancy. I think the technology itself is ethically neutral. It can be useful for genetic screening, but it can be misused, obviously. But as with all technology, it has to be used responsibly, and banning it probably wouldn't offer a real solution as it would just be driven underground - people will always want to find out the sex of their unborn child, whether for curiosity, planning purposes or for more sinister reasons.

[info]neurotic_orchid

January 9 2006, 16:59:08 UTC 6 years ago

Edit 1 - However, when a person is denied the Right to Life because of their sex - in any manner - be it abortion, murder, poor quality of diet - then it is WRONG. Does that make sense to you? i.e Your chances of existence should not be comprised by your sex.

That is really a pro-life argument. Should a "person's" Right to Life be compromised because of their sex... or for any other discriminatory reason (poverty, inconvenience)?


Edit 3 - After reading a few comments - I am suddenly aware that I assumed a greater knowledge of the context of India. Most women may not be going in for the sex-selective abortions through free-will, and instead are likely to be forced to terminate the pregnancy. They could be forced through physical, emotional or financial means.

Forcing a woman to have an abortion against her will really violates pro-choice AND pro-life values. This would be seen as blatantly and obviously wrong, I hope.

[info]ebay313

January 9 2006, 18:14:41 UTC 6 years ago

I'm 100% pro-choice and I don't support sex-selected abortions being illegal. I think it's a woman's body and right to choose for any reason she wants.
I also find situations like that in India very sad, and they need to change. But sex-selected abortions are not the problem, the problem is the prevalent sexism that favors male children to female children. A problem which also hurts born women. I prefer to be outraged at that, rather than the "rights" of female fetuses being violated.

[info]trufflepig

January 10 2006, 00:57:26 UTC 6 years ago

concise and well said, i like it.

[info]nosmokegirl

January 10 2006, 22:22:59 UTC 6 years ago

yeah, all of what lil_elf said.

[info]delphyne_

January 9 2006, 18:41:58 UTC 6 years ago

It's genocide or rather femicide.

[info]transformergeek

January 9 2006, 20:17:39 UTC 6 years ago

It doesn't really fit the definition of genocide, which is the attempted systematic extermination of an entire group.

I bring this up because I've heard people refer to abortion as genocide. No one would be foolish enough to attempt to exterminate all women, just like no one would be foolish enough to attempt to exterminate all fetuses.

[info]nothingmuch

January 9 2006, 19:07:19 UTC 6 years ago

Aren't sex-selective abortions already criminal in India? And it hasn't stopped them?

Maybe the Indian government should instead try outlawing dowries, and other socio-economic factors that lead people to abort female fetuses.

[info]meghadutam

January 9 2006, 19:53:43 UTC 6 years ago

Well - Both sex-determination tests and sex-selective abortions are illegal. But there have always been ways to get both done. Dowries - incidentally are ALSO illegal. I guess the government reflects the apathy of the communities and society we live in. Laws are made - but implementation is poor.

[info]fierceawakening

January 9 2006, 19:16:26 UTC 6 years ago

I think that when we wonder whether these kinds of abortion are "okay" we're looking at them in the light of "well, what would be say to a woman who wants an abortion for these reasons? Would we feel OK preventing her from having it?" and feeling queasy, whereas when we think "Oh wow, people are aborting just because their fetuses are female" we're thinking of the larger "practice" of doing this. I think we do the exact same thing when we consider the debates around aborting fetuses with disabilities.

As far as selecting for sex goes, I don't know -- but in the case of abortion based on disability, I think it's possible to really worry about the practice itself as at least sometimes being a symptom of a fucked up system, while at the same time feeling that placing blame on any individual woman is wrong.

[info]delphyne_

January 9 2006, 19:28:45 UTC 6 years ago

I wouldn't blame women for this state of affairs. It resides squarely with patriarchal men. It is they who value male life over female and who are in the position to coerce women into doing this.

[info]meghadutam

January 9 2006, 20:00:16 UTC 6 years ago

I would include patriarchal women (if such a thing exists.. and I believe it does) in that blame factor.

[info]fierceawakening

6 years ago

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[info]bkwyrm

January 9 2006, 23:11:48 UTC 6 years ago

I think aborting for disabilities is a different issue altogether. Most of the disabilities that can be tested for are neural tube and chromosome defects. A large percentage of these problems will be fatal if the fetus is brought to term. Terminating a pregnancy for fetal birth defects may be "able-ist," but outlawing it or saying it shouldn't be done doesn't work either. I can't imagine being forced to continue a pregnancy and go through the delivery of a child guaranteed to live a short, painful life.

[info]fierceawakening

January 9 2006, 22:27:46 UTC 6 years ago

foeticide assumes that you are killing a foetus (a very Pro-Life stand). i.e. A foetus has "life". However, being pro-choice I do not buy that argument.

I'm not sure if you've just tripped over wording here, but it really doesn't take much to count as alive -- protozoa are alive. Fetuses are as well. The question is not "is this alive?"/"does this 'have life'?" (fetuses are not viruses!) but "ought the mere fact that they are matter?"

[info]meghadutam

January 10 2006, 06:46:04 UTC 6 years ago

By "Life" - I was making a semantic reference to the fundamental Right to Life. I understand "alive-ness" as a biological phenomenon - I was referring to "Life" as a politial statement.
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