In a recent study, abortion advocates outlined six reasons why they believe sex-selection abortion bans are unnecessary in the United States. The study claimed to replace “myths” about sex-selection abortion with “facts” about the issue. However, its “facts” failed to recognize the plight of girls who are discriminated against across the globe when parents (or governments) exhibit male preference by aborting their female daughters.
The study ignores the fact that Planned Parenthood has been documented agreeing to sex-selection abortions in the United States. It also ignores the fact that even if sex-selection was not a misogynistic trend in the United States, it is pro-woman to make sure that legislation prevents biased parents from killing their daughters (or sons, for that matter) due to a gender preference.
At the crux of the issue is the assumption that pro-life advocacy and pro-woman undertakings are mutually exclusive when, in fact, the opposite is true. Pro-lifers are the sole party that have refused to sacrifice the fight for women’s rights on the altar of political agenda.
The unflinching pro-life fight for the freedom of Sudanese captive Meriam Ibrahim in the face of silence from the president and so-called “feminist” abortion advocacy groups serves as an anecdotal testimony to this fact. If it were not for the abortion-no-matter-what agenda, abortion advocates who paint themselves as feminists may not be so quick to abandon vulnerable women when supporting them compromises their goal of totally unrestricted abortion access. Abortion, for them, will trump real women’s rights every time.
Desperate to preserve access to abortion under any circumstances, the abortion movement has been known to exhibit fear in the face of the reality of sex-selection and male child bias. For example, upon the release of the movie It’s a Girl, which documents the real tragedy and prevalence of sex-selection internationally, it was the darling of pro-abortion circles. Touted as a feminist film (which it is), it was hailed by pro-abortion groups for exposing the anti-woman nature of sex-selection and male preference. Until, that is, pro-choicers figured out that the film was created by a Christian pro-life group.
When that tidbit was “uncovered,” abortion advocates quickly changed their tune about the film, writing it off as a piece of pro-life propaganda exploiting women’s rights issues in order to garner support for the pro-life movement. Never mind that the documentary documented actual facts about the plight of females on an international level; the phrase “pro-life” was enough to send the self-proclaimed women’s rights “activists” running in the opposite direction, abandoning a noble cause for the sake of an ignoble abortion agenda.
What is perhaps most troubling about the study is its attitude that, because sex-selection is not as common in the United States as in other countries known for anti-woman tendencies, legislators should choose not to protect children from the gender-selection that does occur in abortion mills across the nation, and that legislation should not be in place to prevent this type of discrimination from occurring at all. The idea that, because there is supposedly only a small number of babies who face this fate in America, laws should err on the side of possible discrimination, is misogynistic in itself.
Imagine the uproar that would ensue if media said something like, “Since most celebrities don’t brutally beat their girlfriends, we should give Chris Brown a pass for doing it to Rihanna. She’s just one woman, after all, and the important thing is to make sure most women are protected, so we should just ignore her case.” Or, “Since most men don’t have a problem with women voting, we can let husbands decide whether their wives can vote because most of them will allow it. No need to ensure this right through legislation.”
America has progressed beyond this, right? Yet these are the fallacies that occur when abortion advocates claim that females do not deserve protection because not enough of them die from gender preference in America to warrant defense. Siding with unrestricted abortion and contraceptive access at the expense of the protection of all women is a well-established hallmark of the pro-choice movement. This has been demonstrated consistently.
Chuck Donovan, President of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, summarized the necessity of protecting children from gender bias by taking proactive and not just reactive measures against the injustice. He said:
[US sex-selection bans] align with international norms and get ahead of the problem… CLI does agree that other methods of protecting and encouraging appreciation for the equal value of women need to be pursued in culture and society. [But the bans comprise] a valid part of an overall approach to vitiating and ultimately eliminating son preference and the abortions to which it gives rise.
