Pro-Life Works: Abortion Double Speak

May 17, 2010

Abortion Double Speak

Cindy Valdez

Membership Services Associate

You know the cliché, “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”  This is precisely the problem for self-proclaimed feminists who support abortion on demand but oppose sex-selective abortion that targets females. 

The irony of this issue is inescapable.  If the mission of the feminist movement is to advocate for social, economic, and political equality for all women, how can they support the practice of killing innocent girl babies based on gender?  Furthermore, the use of ultrasound technology to determine a baby’s sex has made selective abortions easier. 

The effects of sex-selective abortions in India and China, where males are considered more valuable than females, have caused gender imbalances in ratios of girls to boys, leaving a “surplus” of males.  The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences named gender imbalance among newborns as the most serious demographic problem for the country.  In 2009, Beijing released a census indicating there are 117 boys being born to every 100 girls.  This gap widens in the southern Hainan Province to a ratio of 135 to 100.  Today in China, approximately 97% of all unmarried persons between the ages of 28-49 are male.  Yet despite these sobering statistics, the practice of sex-selective abortion remains commonplace.

What do pro-abortion feminists say about these practices?  In an interview with Mark Lander published in The New York Times in August 2009, Hillary Clinton made her opposition known, despite radical support for unlimited abortion on demand.

“Obviously, there’s work to be done in both India and China, because the infanticide rate of girl babies is still overwhelmingly high, and unfortunately with technology, parents are able to use sonograms to determine the sex of a baby, and to abort girl children simply because they’d rather have a boy.  And those are deeply set attitudes.”

Oddly, Secretary Clinton believes that it is an unfortunate use of technology to “choose” to kill unborn females while acknowledging their humanity in her statement- by saying “abort girl children.”   If an unborn child is not a human person, then Clinton’s position on sex-selective abortion is nullified.  Feminist websites such as The Feminist Majority Foundation and the blog website Feministing, remain silent on the issue of sex-selective abortion.  The website for the National Organization for Women has a link entitled “Abortion Around the World-Overview” which bemoans the barriers to unrestricted abortions faced by women around the world.  Absent from this two page report is any mention of the controversial issue of sex-selective abortions. 

In a poignant twist of irony, pro-abortion feminists who oppose sex-selective abortions have themselves to blame because they are the ones who fight tooth and nail to offer access to unrestricted abortion on demand.