My Take on Gender Specific Abortions

[ 2 ] June 11, 2012 AD |

 

Recently, in reaction to the breaking news about Planned Parenthood performing gender specific abortions, a bill was introduced into Congress seeking to make gender specific abortion illegal. The bill did not pass the House of Representatives, sparking something of a furor, not only from pro-life groups, but also from women’s rights groups.

 

I, for one, don’t see what people are complaining about. What did we expect? In what universe does it make sense to outlaw gender specific abortions? Why would a “women’s rights” group which might argue for abortion on demand one minute find it reasonable to argue against gender-specific abortions on the grounds of discrimination? Discrimination against whom? Or what?

 

According to the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade and the network of laws and decisions spawned from that, the preborn fetus is not a human person. It has no rights under the law and therefore can be terminated by its owner (the mother) for any reason whatsoever or for no reason at all. If that is the case then what possible grounds could there be for thinking that one reason is bad enough to be illegal? To try to legislate against that specific reason for abortion is to make the motive and not the act a crime.

 

An example of that already in law is in affirmative action. Suppose I am advertising an apartment for rent and a black man answers the advertisement. Since it is my apartment I can choose to rent or not rent exactly as I please, but if I decide not to rent to him I might be in trouble. He could sue me on the grounds that my refusal to rent was racially motivated and I would have to prove that my motives were something completely different. In this case an act that is not criminal gets me into trouble because of a possible motivation. This is a very dangerous road to follow for a lot of reasons, but on the most basic level it comes down to the principle that the government can have jurisdiction over the act only. Only God can judge motives.

 

So in the case of gender-specific abortions, the attempt to outlaw them essentially is saying that the motive of hating women and girls is worse than the act of killing a fetus. The only way this holds up logically is if you believe that the fetus is not human. However, if the fetus is not human then it cannot be either a woman or a girl. If it is not a human being then there is no one there to hate, no person to be the object of a “hate-crime”. It is no more wrong than neutering bulls to raise them for beef, while raising the cows for milk and breeding.

 

The flip side is also true. If it is wrong to discriminate against the fetus based on gender, that can only mean that the fetus is human. I suspect this was the real reason why the bill did not pass the House, because the legislators saw that if it did pass it would strike at the foundational principle of legalized abortion. So those who are made sick by the idea of aborting a fetus simply because it is a girl need to take a long hard look at what that really means.

 

The motive is really only important to us. The baby knows nothing of the motive, and I expect she wouldn’t care much. In the long run it makes little difference why someone kills you, whether because of your gender, or your race, or your uniform, or just because you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. To the victim it is all the same.

 

Note: this post should not be taken to mean that I approve or even am indifferent to misogyny. The hatred of women and girls by men, and even by themselves, is a very real and terrible issue in our world, with deep roots in the fallenness of our own human nature. But it is a different topic. The issue is not which babies it is legal to kill, or for what reasons it is legal to kill them. The issue is that they are being killed at all.

[author] [author_image timthumb='on']http://www.ignitumtoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Ryan-Kraeger.png[/author_image] [author_info]Ryan Kraeger is a cradle Catholic homeschool graduate, currently serving as an Army Special Forces Medical Sergeant, stationed on the West Coast. He enjoys reading, thinking, and conversation, the making and eating of gourmet pizza, shooting and martial arts, and the occasional dark beer. His website is The Man Who Would Be Knight and he blogs here.[/author_info] [/author]

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Category: Life, Politics

About the Author ()

Ryan Kraeger is a cradle Catholic homeschool graduate, currently serving as an Army Special Forces Medical Sergeant, stationed on the West Coast. He enjoys reading, thinking, and conversation, the making and eating of gourmet pizza, shooting and martial arts, and the occasional dark beer. His website is The Man Who Would Be Knight.
  • http://valbianco.com Val

    I couldn’t agree more, Stacy. It was 1976, three years after Roe v Wade when I first heard my employer say, “Yeah, we’re going to keep it if its a girl.” He wasn’t a bad man, he was a (faithless) practical man. They had a nursery set up for a girl and just didn’t want to change to blue. What? Sound heartless? Wait a minute, the law just hold him that the cause of his wife’s morning sickness wasn’t a child, so they made the logical jump to using this convenient law…for their convenience.

    Hate Crimes: The problem with hate crimes is that those who draft them have no problem with hate…they just want to regulate WHO you hate. I mean, think about it, if all people were treated equally, then a crime would be a
    crime, period. But, by nuancing crime by race, creed, or gender, we effectively REDUCE the culpability for those victims of crime who do not fall under a protected class. I mean if a man is literally dragged to his death for being homosexual, it would seem that the dragging is reason enough to lock the animals up and throw away the key (or better yet, get them a minister, a hot meal, and a one way ticket to the afterlife) But, in the liberal mind, we must punish the motive, because, in the end, the goal of hate crime legislation isn’t justice, it’s mind control. Could there be any clearer evidence of this, than the obvious racial persecution of white couples and individuals through our nation by black thugs and WORSE, casual passers by. Yet, HATE is never mentioned, in the rare instances when these attacks are properly reported.
    I understand the feigned indignation of the left for sex selective abortion, but crying foul over this issue is simply an attempt to reframe the diabolical slaughter of unborn babies into a politically correct crusade for those lacking the stomach to tacle the real issue. Reminds me of the old vaudeville routine of the unpaid prostitute crying “I’ve been raped!” Really, “methinks though dost protest too much”

  • Maddie

    One of your points is particularly interesting.

    In England, I think abortion on the basis of gender is illegal (supposedly but I imagine it still happens).

    If one can’t abort on the basis of gender it means we can’t discriminate against the foetus on the basis of gender. If the foetus has a right not to be discriminated against on the basis of gender … (it’s a shame the same reasoning isn’t applied to disability)

    Wait, the foetus has a RIGHT?

    Why would it have rights if it wasn’t human.

    I’m from England and it seems stupid that no one has cottoned on to this. It’s a shame that bill wasn’t passed in America.

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