Opposition to Outlawing Sex Selective Abortion or Why Killing Females Because They are Females is Acceptable Collateral Damage to Some Feminist Groups

My favorite website this week is http://yaleglobal.yale.edu. If you haven't seen it yet, it's well worth a perusal.

I found this quote which struck me for both its frankness, the despicableness of the faulty moral reasoning, and the source. The author was the former director of the UN Population Fund, and Yale isn't exactly a bastion of pro-life thought.
"Others, however, while acknowledging that sex-selective abortion is a morally reprehensible practice, stress a woman’s right to choose her reproductive outcomes as paramount. Many pro-choice and feminist groups are convinced that outlawing sex-selective abortion will undermine the reproductive rights of women."

Another quote that I found scary was this one: "Higher (male-to-famale sex) ratios are observed in urban areas, 111, and in the wealthier Indian states of Punjab and Haryana, 126 and 122, respectively." I've been told by Indian friends in the past that sex preferences are mostly limited to the backwoods provinces in the NE. This seems to directly contradict such claims and does not bode well. If the wealthier (presumably better educated states) have the highest sex ratio imbalances, that implies to me that rooting out such deep seated prejudice is going to be very difficult and won't occur automatically with development and a better educated female populace. Indeed, even immigrant communities in the US have measureable sex ratio imbalances. "Increasing evidence suggests that the practice of sex-selective abortions is occurring among Chinese and Indian immigrant communities living abroad. In the US, for example, figures from the 2000 census indicate US-born children of Chinese, Indian and Korean parents tended to be male."

The article on this "dilemna" underscores for me the logic behind denying US funding to the UNFPA which helps to administer China's draconian one-child policy (including forced sterilization and forced abortion) and which leads to terrible consequences such as the kidnapping and sale of children. Organizations which have lost their moral bearings to the point that outlawing sex-selective abortion is considered to be a "dilemna" don't deserve taxpayer dollars.

MB