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Thursday, December 14, 2006 12:00 AM

Saved, or sacrificed?

Infanticide and abortion of female fetuses remain major problems in India, but some parents believe they're sparing their daughters lives of hardship.

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  • Friday, December 15, 2006 10:17 AM

    Not really an issue of abortion rights

    LeCastor, Franklin, and others seem to conclude that abortion as sex selection must be condoned if abortion is to be accepted at all, and that we must therefore accept abortion-as-genocide just as we accept and fight for a woman's right to choose in general.

    There is a grain of truth in LeCastor's statement: "If a fetus has no right to life, it has no right to life, no matter why the abortion happens." On an individual basis, perhaps. If I were talking to an individual woman who made the decision to abort her female fetus because of the social and cultural pressures to have a male child, or for fear of the life a female child would likely face, I might have sympathy for that individual decision. However, the social and cultural conditions themselves, and suffering and gender imbalance that result from these conditions, are deplorable. The issue here, as I see it, is not whether or not we must accept a woman's right to have an abortion in this or any other situation. Indeed, attempts at regulating abortion as sex selection seem to have failed here. The issue is clearly that something must be done to make being and having a girl as much of a blessing as being or having a boy.

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