Abortion vs. Right To Choose (specifically, to choose gender)

[Wolfman]

A rather interesting and complex topic. In China, because of the strong preference for male children over female children, it is illegal for a doctor to reveal the gender of a child before it is born, in order to prevent deliberate abortion of females. This is a serious problem in countries like China and India, where the male/female ratio is terribly skewed. This doesn't prevent people trying to find out their baby's gender, and a great many doctors will take an under-the-table 'donation' to reveal that information.

However, a doctor in Canada is now proposing that Canadian doctors should likewise refuse to reveal the gender of babies when doing an ultrasound. His argument:

The practice of aborting a female fetus after the parents learn the sex of their developing child through ultrasound is not as widespread in Canada as in such countries as India and China, where a cultural and often religious preference for boys has led to the estimated destruction of millions of females in the womb.

But Dr. Kale says smaller numbers in Canada, estimated in the thousands, are no reason to ignore such gender-based violence.


“Female feticide devalues women completely,” said Dr. Kale, interim editor-in-chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal. He wants to see doctors withhold information about the sex of a child in the womb until 30 weeks' gestation to prevent “an unquestioned abortion” because parents prefer a boy.

Now, in my mind, this raises an interesting dilemma.


On the one hand, we have the woman's right to choose...her right to have an abortion for any reason, to have control over her body, and her choices about what to do with it. On the other hand, we have female fetuses being deliberately aborted because people prefer a male...a practice that very arguably is degrading to women, implicitly giving them a lower value than males.


This seems terribly complex to me. My initial reaction (particularly being in China) is that I'd tend to agree with this. I think it is terrible for people to get an abortion based simply on the fact that their baby is female, and they want a male. I think it is degrading, and strengthens perceptions that men are more important and more valuable than women.


On the other hand...abortion advocates (and I should clarify that I'm pro-choice, this isn't some back-handed way to claim that abortion is wrong) state that a woman has an absolute right to control her body, and to make her own choices about whether she keeps her baby, or gets an abortion. So...would that not also mean that she has the right/freedom to abort because she prefers a particular gender? And what of the women out there who would abort a male fetus because she preferred a female one?


Then there's the issue that, in Canada at least, the majority of people don't think this way...so you'd be deliberately withholding information from them, which I'm sure would raise an outcry, and complaints that they were being treated like criminals (or potential criminals), when they have no such desire, nor intent.


And targeting only those communities (Chinese, Indian, etc.) who are known to engage in such practices would be absolutely impossible...screams of racial profiling, discrimination, etc. would immediately kill any such effort.


So...what do you think? Should we simply allow people to abort a fetus based solely on the preference for a particular gender (and provide them with the necessary information to make such a decision)?



If yes...would you apply this only to a country like Canada, or to all countries, including places like China and India? Why, or why not?


If no...how would/should such a policy be implemented?


Of course, if you're anti-abortion, I'm sure you'll chime in, but your conclusions are pretty much already pre-determined. I'm more interested in hearing from those on the pro-choice side of the debate, as I anticipate that this issue is going to become more public in future (as more immigrants from countries like China and India continue to flock to Canada and the U.S.), and I think it is a valid and important social/cultural question.

 

[NewtonTrino]

IMHO you can't really fix stuff like this with laws, you have to fix it through education and changing culture. Basically fixing it is ridiculously hard.

Laws may help curb it to some extent though.

 

[Sam.I.Am]

Making abortions legal until the ninth trimester would fix this problem...

 

[Loss Leader]

The woman's right to information about what is going n in her own body, including the gender of a fetus, should be paramount to everything else.

If I were a public policy wonk in India or China, I might feel differently.

 

[ddt]

Why limit the question to North America, and specifically to immigrants from China, India or other cultures where male offspring is preferred?

I had a vague recollection we had a public discussion in Holland about abortions for reason of unwanted gender; however, all I could find to back that up were newspaper articles from 2009 about a Swedish woman who had been suspected of doing just that. She already had two daughters, and had two abortions a year apart - in both cases the fetus was female.

So I can imagine also people from western cultures doing just that. You want the typical family, one son and one daughter; when the second pregnancy turns out to have the same gender as the first kid, you abort it. Of course, such abortions are gender-neutral over the long run.

IMHO you can't really fix stuff like this with laws, you have to fix it through education and changing culture. Basically fixing it is ridiculously hard.

This.

Laws may help curb it to some extent though.

How? Proscribe this as a reason in abortion law?

Someone who has a wanted/expected pregnancy but is determined to abort for reasons of gender will also be determined enough to make up another, convincing reason to tell the doctor in an interview, or however you want to check the reasons for an abortion.

 

[myowninvention]

Personally, I'd much rather see an increase in abortions due to gender then unwanted children being brought into the world. The practice of aborting a female fetus is not causing female to be valued less, it is a symptom of a culture where that is already the case, and preventing those abortions isn't making parents value a female child any more, nor is it doing anything to address the underlying problem.

 

[myowninvention]

Making abortions legal until the ninth trimester would fix this problem...

Ninth trimester?

 

[Beat]

IMHO you can't really fix stuff like this with laws, you have to fix it through education and changing culture. Basically fixing it is ridiculously hard.

Fixing it through education *is* ridiculously hard, but it is nowhere near as hard as letting it be.

 

[Sam.I.Am]

Ninth trimester?

 

[Wolfman]

It's interesting, considering my perspective on this now, and what my perspective would have been before I came to China. Having spent almost two decades in China (and traveled in India several times), I've seen the terrible results of a culture in which male children are very highly preferred over female children.

Now, there are arguably good reasons for this...in both cultures, when children marry, the wife becomes a part of the husband's family, and her responsibility is to them...not to her own family. Thus, if you have several boys, then when they get married, you get more people who will take care of you in your old age; but if you have girls, then when they get married, you are left stranded, with nobody to care for you.

But the result of such thinking is that its not just unborn female fetuses that are unwanted...this perspective permeates society, and females are in general considered much less valuable than males. What else would you expect in a culture that, from the moment they discover they are pregnant, says, "If its a girl, we trash it; if its a boy, we keep it"?

Personally, in this situation, I think that laws to prevent parents knowing the gender of their children are a good thing. It's fine to talk about the value of education over legislation...but in these countries, that level of cultural change will take one or two generations (at least). And in the meantime, you'll have a gender gap that increases dramatically, causing huge social damage. (Even with laws to prevent parents knowing the gender of the fetus, China still has one of the most imbalanced gender ratios in the world...think what it would be like without this law!).

Thus, from that perspective, I would be inclined to support such a law.

However -- Canada is an entirely different situation. There may be parents who prefer a particular gender...but the preference for male and female children is far more likely to be fairly balanced (some will prefer males, some will prefer males). While there are a minority (mostly recent immigrants) who have this strong cultural preference for male children, their own kids will grow up in Canada, and be influenced by Canadian culture. It is far less likely that they will continue this cultural trend when they themselves are adults.

I hate the decreased value placed on females that is intrinsic to such a practice; but in a country like Canada, the combination of culture and education will more than likely negate any long-term trends in this regard. I would like to see more education specifically targeting immigrants (not just in this regard, but in a lot of areas, such as women's equality, not beating your kids, or other cultural issues that tend to be imported along with the people arriving in our country); I'm personally of the perspective that those who live in Canada should be expected to accept and follow our cultural standards (and if they don't want to, then don't give them citizenship), at least where it affects issues of equality, freedom, and other such issues.

I just found it interesting to see this issue -- which is a highly relevant issue in China -- actually being discussed in Canada.

 

[McHrozni]

This seems terribly complex to me. My initial reaction (particularly being in China) is that I'd tend to agree with this. I think it is terrible for people to get an abortion based simply on the fact that their baby is female, and they want a male. I think it is degrading, and strengthens perceptions that men are more important and more valuable than women.

I agree that it is horrible, but it was also pretty widespread before modern social advances. I think may even be a somewhat evolutionary thing to perfer males over females, but it wasn't a problem until modern medical advances. It could also be entirely cultural, I don't know, but the possibility is there. In any event, the combination is toxic and needs to be prevented as much as possible.

In Canada (and many other places) social change outpaced medical advances, and such prefference was minimized to the point where aborting a fetus just because it was female would amount to almost a crime, and there was no need to adjust legislation as a result of technological advances. In China and India, social change lagged, and legislation was necessary to prevent an even worse fallout. The good thing is that immigrants tend to slowly accept the cultural norms of the country they move to.

The issue, therefore, is limited only to relatively recent immigrants, who have not adjusted to the culture yet. I think that it would be better to focus on education of immigrants than to use laws to prevent it. It's much less traumatic and much more effective, and there is no need for the majority to be inconvenienced because there is a minority that lags in social adjustment. Gender-specific abortion needs to be outlawed, but that's pretty much as far as I want legislation to go.

McHrozni

 

[McHrozni]

IMHO you can't really fix stuff like this with laws, you have to fix it through education and changing culture. Basically fixing it is ridiculously hard.

Laws may help curb it to some extent though.

Laws to fix such cultural issues are needed when the situation is very bad and needs something that will work quickly. They're unlikely to fix the problem, just made it less urgent for other mechanisms to work. China is a prime example of this - I strongly believe the situation would be a lot worse than it is now, and it's pretty bad (6 males per 5 females at birth, against a world average of 21 to 20). Fixing this will take 1-2 generations, so laws were necessary to prevent China from suffering a rather severe gender imbalance, likely resulting in all sorts of upheval, followed by a major population implosion a generation later.

McHrozni

 

[KoihimeNakamura]

Wolfman: You might want to fix the (some prefer males, some prefer males) bit

 

[Professor Yaffle]

In the UK, many NHS hospitals won't reveal the sex of the foetus at scans, especially in regions with a high population of an ethnic origin where selective abortion is more likely. You can still get a private scan if you want to know the sex.

I have less of a problem with barring sex selective abortions than some others do. There are many things we can do, but are barred from doing if it is done of the basis of sex (or race etc). For example shops have the right to refuse service, but they don't have the right to do so on the basis of racial discrimination, for example.

 

[nabee]

It's interesting, considering my perspective on this now, and what my perspective would have been before I came to China. Having spent almost two decades in China (and traveled in India several times), I've seen the terrible results of a culture in which male children are very highly preferred over female children.

Now, there are arguably good reasons for this...in both cultures, when children marry, the wife becomes a part of the husband's family, and her responsibility is to them...not to her own family. Thus, if you have several boys, then when they get married, you get more people who will take care of you in your old age; but if you have girls, then when they get married, you are left stranded, with nobody to care for you.

But the result of such thinking is that its not just unborn female fetuses that are unwanted...this perspective permeates society, and females are in general considered much less valuable than males. What else would you expect in a culture that, from the moment they discover they are pregnant, says, "If its a girl, we trash it; if its a boy, we keep it"?

Personally, in this situation, I think that laws to prevent parents knowing the gender of their children are a good thing. It's fine to talk about the value of education over legislation...but in these countries, that level of cultural change will take one or two generations (at least). And in the meantime, you'll have a gender gap that increases dramatically, causing huge social damage. (Even with laws to prevent parents knowing the gender of the fetus, China still has one of the most imbalanced gender ratios in the world...think what it would be like without this law!).

Thus, from that perspective, I would be inclined to support such a law.

However -- Canada is an entirely different situation. There may be parents who prefer a particular gender...but the preference for male and female children is far more likely to be fairly balanced (some will prefer males, some will prefer males). While there are a minority (mostly recent immigrants) who have this strong cultural preference for male children, their own kids will grow up in Canada, and be influenced by Canadian culture. It is far less likely that they will continue this cultural trend when they themselves are adults.

I hate the decreased value placed on females that is intrinsic to such a practice; but in a country like Canada, the combination of culture and education will more than likely negate any long-term trends in this regard. I would like to see more education specifically targeting immigrants (not just in this regard, but in a lot of areas, such as women's equality, not beating your kids, or other cultural issues that tend to be imported along with the people arriving in our country); I'm personally of the perspective that those who live in Canada should be expected to accept and follow our cultural standards (and if they don't want to, then don't give them citizenship), at least where it affects issues of equality, freedom, and other such issues.

I just found it interesting to see this issue -- which is a highly relevant issue in China -- actually being discussed in Canada.

I also think it's a really interesting situation...though I'd have to agree that not allowing prospective parents to know the sex of their unborn child is probably better than allowing them to know and facing a potential abortion simply based on gender preferences. At the same time, however, I think you're right in terms of parents wanting their child to take care of them when they are older.

I am in South Korea and the situation is similar here. Preference for male children, and an overwhelming number of male births vs. female births means South Korean men (particularly in the countryside) are having a harder time finding wives, (this is due to cultural reasons as well) and they are turning to foreign countries (China, Vietnam) to find them....

It's a very complex topic...

 

[Francesca R]

So...what do you think? Should we simply allow people to abort a fetus based solely on the preference for a particular gender (and provide them with the necessary information to make such a decision)?

Yes, in countries with high rankings of political and economic freedom. Once abortion is accepted as ethical, I tend not to think that sex-selective abortion is any less so. It almost undoubtedly does, however, create significant net negative social externalities if it is too widespread in one direction (and the only observed tendency for it to skew is against female births)

If yes...would you apply this only to a country like Canada, or to all countries, including places like China and India? Why, or why not?

I would apply it (a liberal policy) to Canada since there is insufficient evidence of a sex-selective abortion problem. I don't know about China and India. Sex-selective abortion in both countries has been illegal for almost two decades, but it is not easily enforced, which is why sex identification of a foetus is also illegal. Removing China's one-child policy, and "waiting for both countries to get rich" would help but the analysis I've read suggests that all this would be insufficient to make the practice go away. South Korea is IIRC the only good example in Asia of the sex ratio at birth first rising but then falling back. Some combination of economic growth and cultural change is probably responsible but I don't think additional laws would make much difference.

 

[Francesca R]

The practice of aborting a female fetus is not causing female to be valued less.

I'm easily persuaded that it creates significant social problems of rising crime (including trafficking women/rape/prostitution but not just these sorts of crimes). For instance Sex Ratios And Crime, Edlund et al 2008

 

[Francesca R]

I've linked to this before but the authority on statistics about sex ratios at birth is the United Nations DESA Population database. The natural ratio is 1.05 males:1.

 

[Wolfman]

The practice of aborting a female fetus is not causing female to be valued less, it is a symptom of a culture where that is already the case, and preventing those abortions isn't making parents value a female child any more, nor is it doing anything to address the underlying problem.

Actually, I disagree. If parents are allowed to continue the practice of gender-based abortions in countries like China or India, then there is neither the need or the incentive for people to change their practices, and there will be greater resistance to attempts to change the cultural values regarding men and women. Whereas if that option is taken away from them, then there is much greater incentive to change.

Plain fact -- people tend to resist change. And the less incentive there is to change, the more likely they are to resist it. Making laws to prevent gender-based abortions won't solve the problem by itself; but in combination with other efforts (education, etc.), it can help provide a strong incentive to accept change which might otherwise be resisted.

 

[Francesca R]

I am in South Korea and the situation is similar here. Preference for male children, and an overwhelming number of male births vs. female births [ . . . ]

South Korea is IIRC the only good example in Asia of the sex ratio at birth first rising but then falling back. [ . . . ]

Korea's statistic looks like this. Data from the World Bank (gender statistics).