It’s Not a Trick Question

There’s a post up at the Abortion Gang blog this week that provides an interesting glimpse into the mindset of individuals who, at the end of the day, can’t bring themselves to say sex-selective abortion is wrong.

The writer, KushielsMoon, begins thusly:

Anti-choicers are always trying to trick pro-choicers into saying something that makes them look bad. One such example is when anti-choicers bring up sex-selective abortions. “If you support girls/women, how can you support sex-selective abortions!?!” they ask … They don’t ask these questions because they’re interested in reducing sex-selective abortions; they’re just interested in making pro-choicers seem coldhearted.

Actually, we’re quite interested in reducing sex-selective abortions — not to mention non-sex-selective abortions — to zero.

And considering the fact that self-styled pro-choice advocates bandy about slogans like “Abortion on demand and without apology” (such as those pictured above, right), asking about sex-selective abortion isn’t a trick question.

Abortion for Any Reason?

Instead, it amounts to an inquiry as to whether one really does carry one’s beliefs to their logical conclusion. That is, if “pro-choice” advocates really believe that a woman should be legally entitled to have an abortion for any reason, then indeed, any reason will do, and they shouldn’t flinch when confronted with questions that ask them to clarify whether they do, in fact, believe there is nothing wrong with a woman choosing to have an abortion based solely on her offspring’s sex.

KushielsMoon goes on to say:

But what if they did want to reduce sex-selective abortions? How would they go about doing that? Pro-choice, of course, already has the answer: Feminism.

Which she defines as follows:

Feminism says that both sexes are equal in value and worth. Men and women, with their differences and similarities, are not better than one another but standing on an equal plane.

Taken by itself, I can see nothing in this definition of “feminism” that is in any way objectionable. On the contrary, it sounds a lot like the “New Feminism” espoused by philosophers in the vein of St. Edith Stein and Pope John Paul II.

But of course, this isn’t the sort of “feminism” KushielsMoon has in mind.

Dodging the Question

Later, after writing that “feminism would give the opinions of women equal weight to men,” she asks:

Who knows- maybe women in China and other countries don’t want to have sex selective abortions, but their culture pressures them into that decision?

Surely this is quite often the case. But what if a woman were to freely choose, sans any cultural pressure, to have a sex-selective abortion? Would that be OK? KushielsMoon doesn’t say.

But she does say this:

So next time an anti-choicer asks you what you think of sex-selective abortions, ask them right back: “What are you doing to prevent sex-selection?” Then ask them to support feminism, so that males and females will be valued equally.

And so, KushielsMoon answers the question by not answering the question and responding with a non sequitur.

Baby Boys Aborted Because They Were Boys

Interestingly, the way KushielsMoon frames the issue of sex-selective abortion throughout her post is predicated on the practice being the by-product of a culture in which women and girls are not valued as much as men and boys — and thus, its victims are exclusively female.

But what about when sex-selective abortion cuts the other way, as in the case of this Australian couple who are so desperate to have a girl that they have aborted twin baby boys — for no other reason than that they weren’t girls?

To be sure, supporting the sort of feminism that abortion advocates believe in wouldn’t have helped the cause of those baby boys.