The practice of sex selected abortions is relatively new to North America but has been practiced for decades, openly and covertly, in many South and Southeast Asian countries. In recent years small segments of certain immigrant groups have imported this tendency to design the perfect one child family to the US. There is also evidence that, with the development of technologies which can determine the sex of an unborn child at increasingly early gestational ages, the practice is being adopted by broader, more diverse segments of the population. Sex selected abortions remain relatively uncommon and controversial, however, making this the time to act to stop the practice.
If we wait too long to get around to banning this practice so at odds with American ideals of fairness and equality, it might be too late. The Sex Selected Abortion Ban provides Massachusetts with an elegant, two paragraph solution to a problem that, given the heavy presence of the bio-technology industry in the Commonwealth, may become very serious in time.
Sponsored by Rep. Elizabeth Poirier (R-North Attleborough) the bill enjoys the support of eleven co-sponsors including not only pro-life Republicans and Democrats but also legislators who have a record of embracing what they describe as a pro-choice position, such as NARAL-endorsed Joyce Spiliotis (D-Peabody). Informal canvassing of the legislature by pro-life activists has also revealed a strong base of bipartisan support for the measure among lawmakers not listed as co-sponsors. Figures across the ideological spectrum recognize the danger sex selected abortion poses to our society and are willing to act to protect Massachusetts.
It is easy to see why all sides of a controversial issue can come together in support of this humane, common-sense measure. If social liberals cannot bring themselves to agree with the pro-life movement regarding the immorality of abortions in general, they can certainly agree that aborting unborn girls because of their sex is essentially frivolous, illiberal and anti-feminist.
Go here to learn more about the ban: http://masscitizensforlife.org…
If people aren’t really doing this in America, then why are we trying to outlaw it? Is there even the slightest evidence that this practice is likely to increase in this country? And are you saying that our legislators have already solved our more serious problems so they can start fixing theoretical problems? I can’t help thinking that the point of this legislation is to to take one more step toward outlawing abortion all together.
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p>How do you enforce a law like this anyway? Are you going to say that you can’t have an abortion if you know the gender of the fetus? Are you going to force people to undergo a polygraph before getting an abortion and assert they are not doing it because of gender?
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p>This is a deeply stupid and pointless bill.
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Ain’t that the truth. What a waste.
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p>Their ultimate goal is to outlaw abortion, and their immediate goal is to embarrass pro-choice advocates.
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p>I hope our legislators can find common ground in shunning pointless exercises.
Sounds like what I’d expect from someone who lives according to Sharia law — just be glad you don’t live in Oklahoma!
…that this is similar to attempts to ban sharia just for the bogeyman aspect.
I suppose if you had read my post before deciding I was an idiot you might have notices that I said the practice is uncommon at present, not unheard of.
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p>Ponzi schemes are relatively uncommon, and given the increased SEC enforcement in the wake of the Madoff scandal they are unlikely to become more common–perhaps we ought not to worry about them until they are a “real” problem.
The practice is practically unheard of and you have presented absolutely no evidence that it is likely to increase (because there is no such evidence).
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p>I don’t think you are an idiot. I think that you are cynically trying to manipulate your opponents into handing the anti-abortion crowd another weapon they can use to intimidate doctors. You must think that we are idiots if you think that we will fall for this.
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p>Note that the bill is specifically targeted at doctors not at the patient, even though this is entirely based on what is going on in the head of the person requesting the abortion. You have not even begun to explain how this bill would be enforced. This leads me to conclude that this will be used to allow anti-abortion groups to set up sting operations where they will try to get doctors to break the law and then will sue.
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p>Your analogy to Ponzi schemes is indeed idiotic. Ponzi schemes are actually all too common. Furthermore, they hurt a lot of people. Furthermore, they were illegal long before Madoff. Try again.
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Let us stipulate, for the purposes of argument only, that the practice is nearly unheard of. Is it wrong? Would it become more or less wrong if it became more common?
but I can’t call it wrong to the point of outlawing it. Nor do I believe that things that are wrong should be outlawed in general, especially things that depend solely on what is going on in someone else’s head.
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p>But you still haven’t made the slightest effort of responding to any of my other points. What is the real motivation behind this bill? Can there be any question that this is intended to give you a weapon to use against doctors who perform abortions?
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p>As I said already, it is deeply stupid to pass unenforceable laws to solve imaginary problems. Now that doesn’t mean that legislators aren’t stupid enough to do this from time to time, but don’t expect me to applaud it.
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p>You also haven’t explained why it would be “too late” to pass such a law later, if and when this ever becomes a real societal problem. The fact is that saying that is just a childish, and cheap scare tactic.
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But I’m afraid that calling sex selective abortion merely “distasteful” gets a big fat 4.
What if someone already had six sons and really wanted a daughter? Or six daughters and wanted a son? Is that so bad? Everyone seems to be assuming the only reason one would do this is because they only want sons. That has been the problem in China, and they now have to suffer the consequences of not having enough women. But is that what would be happening here?
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p>The problem with just going out and saying this is absolutely morally wrong is that it is a little to close to saying that abortion is morally wrong. Something as a man, I am not willing to say, since there is no way I can really put myself in the shoes of a woman considering an abortion for any reason.
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p>There also may be a totally morally acceptable reason: you might know based on the genetics of the parents that a child of a particular gender (probably female) would be highly likely to suffer from some serious genetic defect or disease.
This law makes no provision for such a case.
Then it’s morally wrong. As I read this post, I recalled an article that I read some years back.
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p>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03…
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p>Published in the New York Times, the article, written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Dutch legislator, wrote about a report which indicated that there are 113 million to 200 million women missing, due to violence, neglect and selective abortion:
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p>I recognize that there are cultures that do believe this…cultures that live in the US. Are we okay with this? Are we only outraged by domestic violence and neglect, the genital mutilation, and honor killings…but not selective abortion? Just asking. Selective abortion may not be widespread right now, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be. In the name of multiculturalism, are we okay with having females culled from the herd?
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p>I think the bill, which I hadn’t heard of until tonight, has merit.
I agree that abortion due to disrespect of an entire gender is not something we should consider acceptable in our culture, but the fact that other cultures feel differently indicates that morality is not as universal as we might like it to be.
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p>Still, I don’t think it is acceptable for use to criminalize a legal act purely based on what is going on in the head of the person who chooses it. And as I said, this law is not aimed at the person requesting the abortion, but at the doctor who carries it out. So we would be punishing doctors who are just trying to do their job, not the families who are crossing a moral line.
if this is really so morally clear-cut then surely doctors will refuse to perform an abortion if they believe that the patient’s reason for doing so is morally wrong or if the patient is being coerced by family members. This law presumes that doctors have no moral sense of their own and need to be forced to do the right thing by law. In the absence of any evidence that this is happening to any degree in this country, this is an insult to doctors.
who gets an abortion over the gender of the child, they’re the type of person who will lie that they are getting an abortion over the gender of the child.
…I really don’t think it’s the government’s business what the woman’s reason is for decision. That being said I would personally find this reason distasteful.
A 4 for you as well, Chris.
Somebody with whom you disagree “need work”? Not saying I’m not guilty of rating by agreement, but I just don’t get that…
that sex selection was done by sperm sorting into X and Y, or by selecting the embryos when doing IVF, and that’s not illegal nor would it be illegal under this law (or maybe it does I don’t know), it only applies to abortions. Does that make sense?
but we all know that this law is not really intended to solve the problem it authors claim. This is a cynical attempt to slip a law by pro-choice legislators that will give the anti-abortion crowd another tool for intimidating doctors who perform abortions.
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p>Mr. Triolo’s non-response to my points, makes it clear that they did not even bother to come up with canned responses to obvious objections they should expect to get about this law. He didn’t even bother to deny my assertion of an ulterior motive for trying to get this law passed.
Having an abortion solely to choose the sex of your child is despicable.
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p>The anti-choice lobby trying to take control over a woman’s body is also despicable.
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p>With no hard evidence of why a woman chose to abort, this bill appears to be nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt to green light a witch hunt against abortion providers.
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p>No thanks. I will be writing my Representative tomorrow to urge him to vote NO.
I’ve tried to stay out of this thread, because I think the entire premise is best ignored. This “proposal” is just more anti-abortion nonsense.
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p>If a bill comes to a vote (such as HD792), it should be quickly, quietly, and summarily dismissed.