Letters to the Editor
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Keep your judgments off my cultural body!
I risk going the reductio-ad-absurdum route here, but really, take things to their logical conclusion: If a woman's body and its colonisation by a fetus are entirely her own business, then what right has anyone to tell her not to abort for the sake of gender?
Do I deplore sex selection in India and elsewhere? Am I horrified at the thought of better-educated women being more likely to abort their girls? Do I think this represents a sad comment on how little the status of women has changed not just in India, but doubtless in many other countries as well (think of China's "bachelor villages, so bereft of women that men have to import foreigners to marry)? Um, yeah. But I'm honest enough to say, in regard to this particular aspect of the problem, that if people are going to champion free and unfettered access to abortion as a sine-qua-non of women's empowerment, they're not leaving themselves in the best position to turn around and put restrictions on it--any restrictions, not just ones that pro-choice people feel are "okay".
Damn. This ethics thing is hard.
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How many American girls?
So how many American girls are aborted every year? Given the high population density of India, one-half million female abortions seems rather low, actually.
Actually, I looked it up. The American abortion rate is about 1.3 million per year. If half of these are assumed female, then Americans are aborting more female fetuses than the Indians are.
Just keeping things in perspective.
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What's not to like?
Indian women, even lower-class Indian women, with the freedom to choose the size of their families and choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy. I love it. Fewer women in the population in the future means lowered reproduction rates, eased population growth, and a greater social value assigned to females. Again, no complaints here.
Now if only we could make those choices available to women throughout the U.S. Which one is the third-world country, again?
Being pro-choice means you support the rights of women to make reproductive choices that are best for them, even if they're based on criteria that you don't necessarily agree with. The core of "pro-choice," for me, is that the option to abort is a private family matter. I totally approve of the cultural front (the morality skits, the soap operas, the movies, etc.) that's advancing in contemporary India to effect improvement in the social ranking of women; I think that's the only right way to change the minds of parents about whether they'll keep and raise their girls. However, I do not approve of restricting abortion, ultrasound, prenatal exam, or family planning access to force families to have more girls.
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Chinese orphans
The Americans who are adopting Chinese girls are saving them from short lives of starvation and hardship in the concentration camps for children the Chinese call "orphanages".
Abandoned Chinese girls won't grow up to be hardworking Chinese women who marry Chinese men. They will most likely not grow up, period. Rates of female infanticide in China are insanely high.
So Westerners who are adopting Chinese girls are actually saving those Chinese girls from death or worse, not removing them from a society that they would otherwise grow up to benefit.
Personally, I believe these societies are going to be driven to paying mothers to have girls. The consequences of having many, many men who cannot have a monogamous relationship with a woman has already been seen in Arabic countries, where polygamy and strict control of women's sexuality prevents young poor men from getting married or even getting sex. We see terrorism, we see violence, we see men who feel they have nothing whatsoever to lose committing all sorts of atrocities on their fellows. So for these societies -- and perhaps for the world -- this is a horrible development. Yet it *isn't* the place of comfortable Westerners to tell these parents what to do, or how to manage their families. The best we could do is try to encourage the leaders of those countries to promote sexual equality and to actually incent women to bear and raise more girls, for instance with financial incentives (tax breaks for parents with girls?)
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I doubt a scarcity of girls would be good for girls
From my experience as a woman living and working in various parts of Alaska with high male-female ratios, I can tell you that a scarcity of women is no picnic for women! I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that EVERYONE is best off when the gender ratio is more balanced.
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all choice is paramount
If we condemn anyone for aborting girls, what kind of message are we sending about abortion itself? Are we thus saying that abortion is bad if it's for sex selection? Then how do we 'defend' any other reasons? How is wanting a baby but not wanting a girl somehow a less worthy reason than not being easily able to afford a child, or just not wanting to become a mother yet?
Since abortion must continue to be available for any or no reason, we cannot wax indignant about the reasons of others being 'unsuitable' -not only is that wrong from the standpoint of fairness, but it gives the prolife crowd exactly what they want: more ammunition, and a valuable wedge issue to expand and legislate on - 'wrong reasons' for aborting.
Much as we find the idea of aborting girls because they are not valued abhorrent, we must separate that feeling from what is logical and fair regarding the issue of choice.
Yes, the Indian society needs a kick in the ass. Most do - but attacking abortion when it's for sex selection will ultimately be to our detriment.
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Don't Fear the Nuance
" Are we thus saying that abortion is bad if it's for sex selection?"
No, we're saying that sexual discrimination is bad, even in the context of abortion. Are you next going to claim I'm "anti-jobs" if I say that sexual discrimination in the workplace is bad? You're drawing totally unwarranted conclusions.
" How is wanting a baby but not wanting a girl somehow a less worthy reason than not being easily able to afford a child, or just not wanting to become a mother yet?"
At the end of the day, those simply aren't the reasons abortion is available in the first place; such reasoning applies equally to the father who has no such recourse, as discussed at length earlier.
" ...it gives the prolife crowd exactly what they want..."
As we saw in 2004, a nuanced position always gives ammunition to an opponent willing to capitalize on human stupidity. It is impossible, however, for a solid position to be perfectly simple under all circumstances.