A rude awakening
I was waking from the fog of sleep to the sound of ABC NewsRadio. Norman Swann was murmuring one of his Health Minutes to me in his rich Scottish brogue.
I became very much awake as I listened to what he was saying:
A study of a million households and 130,000 births in India has found a curious pattern. If a family's first baby was a boy, the chances of a boy or a girl were the same with the next baby. If, however, they had a girl, then the chances of the next baby being a boy were abnormally high and were even higher if the first two babies were female.
This was irrespective of religion, although it was commoner the richer and more educated a woman was.
The explanation was that women were having ultrasounds and aborting female foetuses to the tune of at least half a million a year. And that's despite selective abortion being outlawed by the Indian government, which has a challenge on its hands to stop this appalling practice.
An appalling practice indeed.
But then it struck me: why? Why would a fairly standard ABC-style commentator such as Norman Swann think it appalling that women were “aborting female foetuses”? I would very much doubt that he would be against abortion per se (he works for the ABC after all). Is he the lone pro-life voice of our national broadcaster? Or has he had a change of heart?
A quick Google search revealed the answer. Outrage at ‘female foeticide’ (as it is called) is a standard left-liberal, feminist-friendly position. Norman was not saying anything unusual. Except that he was, when you think about it.
Why should pro-abortionists want to interfere with a woman's right to choose not to have a girl? It's the woman's body, after all. If she wishes to terminate the pregnancy because it will interrupt her career, or make her unhappy, or curtail her earning power, or cause any other sort of inconvenience, her right to do so is vigorously asserted. If, for personal, familial or economic reasons, she feels that a boy would be more helpful in her family than another girl, then surely she has the right to choose. Doesn't she?
And besides, according to the pro-abortion position, it's not a human girl that's being aborted but a ‘female foetus’. It has the potential to become a girl, but it does not yet share the rights or protections that human persons enjoy. Surely there can be no discrimination involved if there is no person involved.
So what's wrong with selective abortion by sex? Why the outrage at the abortion of female foetuses because they're female, when the abortion of female foetuses for other equally appalling reasons (such as “I don't want a baby at the moment”) continues unabated and unlamented?
It's the collision between feminism's demand for free abortion, and feminism's visceral horror at any form of discrimination against the female.
It might be an interesting conversation starter with your pro-abortion friend or colleague: “Tell me, are you against selective abortion on the basis of sex? And if so, why?”