Quizzes & Puzzles5 mins ago
Sex Selective Abortion
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Terrible Crime? or acceptable social engineering?
Terrible Crime? or acceptable social engineering?
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> Why not wait until he's 18 and let him choose?
Why not give birth to the baby and then give it away to somebody who wants one and can't have one?
For the same reason: it might make make logical sense, but logic doesn't come into it. In both cases it's the emotional choice of the parent that determines the outcome.
I find both situations upsetting yet tolerable. If I'm going to find one more upsetting than the other then BY FAR it's abortion. Just look at some of the stats in that article:
* Nearly 200,000 abortions in England and Wales are now carried out each year. 200,000!
* Abortion ends more than one in five of all pregnancies. One in five!
* Half of all pregnancies among girls under 18 end in abortion. Half!
These numbers are amazing and indicate that abortion is, basically, selective contraception. I feel sorry for anyone that feels they have to have an abortion, and I feel sorry for the aborted, but the situation is probably preferable to allowing that many unwanted births.
Why not give birth to the baby and then give it away to somebody who wants one and can't have one?
For the same reason: it might make make logical sense, but logic doesn't come into it. In both cases it's the emotional choice of the parent that determines the outcome.
I find both situations upsetting yet tolerable. If I'm going to find one more upsetting than the other then BY FAR it's abortion. Just look at some of the stats in that article:
* Nearly 200,000 abortions in England and Wales are now carried out each year. 200,000!
* Abortion ends more than one in five of all pregnancies. One in five!
* Half of all pregnancies among girls under 18 end in abortion. Half!
These numbers are amazing and indicate that abortion is, basically, selective contraception. I feel sorry for anyone that feels they have to have an abortion, and I feel sorry for the aborted, but the situation is probably preferable to allowing that many unwanted births.
> Ellipsis, the reference to circumcision earlier in this thread related to female circumcision, aka female genital mutilation.
AFAICT there is no reference to circumcision earlier in this thread, male or female. I raised it, talking specifically about male circumcision to highlight the differences in opinion on male circumcision and female abortion.
> it is illegal, but yet you seem to take the view that such a procedure should be left to the will of the religiously inclined parent, and the law should keep its nose out
No, that is definitely not my view. Please don't put words in my mouth. The facts are these:
* Female genital mutilation is illegal and is more comparable to cutting off a male's glans than his foreskin
* Male circumcision is legal
* Abortion on the grounds of gender selection is technically illegal
* Abortion on the grounds of gender selection is de facto legal, under the effective cover of "damage to the mental health of the mother-to-be"
> which raises the issue of one law for some, and a different law for others - or do you believe that to be an acceptable price to pay in the preservation of religious freedom of expression?
No, clearly not. See above.
AFAICT there is no reference to circumcision earlier in this thread, male or female. I raised it, talking specifically about male circumcision to highlight the differences in opinion on male circumcision and female abortion.
> it is illegal, but yet you seem to take the view that such a procedure should be left to the will of the religiously inclined parent, and the law should keep its nose out
No, that is definitely not my view. Please don't put words in my mouth. The facts are these:
* Female genital mutilation is illegal and is more comparable to cutting off a male's glans than his foreskin
* Male circumcision is legal
* Abortion on the grounds of gender selection is technically illegal
* Abortion on the grounds of gender selection is de facto legal, under the effective cover of "damage to the mental health of the mother-to-be"
> which raises the issue of one law for some, and a different law for others - or do you believe that to be an acceptable price to pay in the preservation of religious freedom of expression?
No, clearly not. See above.
Abortion on the grounds of sex selection is technically legal, in as much as there doesn't need to be a reason except the wishes of the mother. As it affects her.
circumcision does not affect the parents, so forcing it on a child for no reason other than "we want to" is not the same.
To a lesser extent, i don't even like seeing babies with pierced ears. Why would you do that?!
circumcision does not affect the parents, so forcing it on a child for no reason other than "we want to" is not the same.
To a lesser extent, i don't even like seeing babies with pierced ears. Why would you do that?!
Sex-specific abortions can have unintended consequences. It says here that by 2020 there may be as many as 24 million Chinese men of marrying age won't be able to find a partner. When the Chinese authorities introduced the one child per family rule they should have made sure that as many baby girls as boys were being born.
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I'm not sure how they would do that, sandyroe? Hopefully not by terminating foetuses just because they're male as well. I think the limit should be brought down for on-demand abortions to about 12 or 14 weeks. You don't know the sex of the baby at that stage anyway. And only carried out later in exceptional circumstances of health or major disabilities.
The full horror of the Chinese one-child policy was that it didn't always involve abortion.
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> Abortion on the grounds of sex selection is technically legal, in as much as there doesn't need to be a reason except the wishes of the mother. As it affects her.
No, that is not the law. It is certainly illegal to have an abortion on the grounds of sex selection in and of itself.
If anybody was going to be prosecuted in the case the article refers to, it was the two doctors who agreed the abortion - not the mother who asked for it. They still may be prosecuted and, if they are, their defence will be that in their professional opinion not providing an abortion would have affected the mental wellbeing of the woman. Their defence would certainly not be that abortion on the grounds of sex selection is legal, because it isn't.
The reason the doctors weren't prosecuted was because it was felt that it "wasn't in the public interest" to prosecute - possibly because it would open up the can of worms we are discussing here.
> I think the limit should be brought down for on-demand abortions to about 12 or 14 weeks
The situation is that we have a woman who will suffer mental anguish if she does not have an abortion. So if we reduce the limit so that she has to suffer that mental anguish, then in her case we've effectively just removed the reason why the abortion law exists in the first place. This could re-introduce the problems that the abortion law was designed to solve, e.g. backstreet abortions. As the pro-choice Ann Furedi puts it "You can't be pro choice except when you don't like the choice".
> circumcision does not affect the parents, so forcing it on a child for no reason other than "we want to" is not the same
You may feel that "circumcision does not affect the parents" but that's a very big reason why parents do arrange for their boys to be circumcised - not for the boy, but for the parents; which is also a very big reason why many (prospective) parents arrange for an abortion - not for the child, but for the parents.
Let's suppose we made male circumcision illegal. Does that mean they would stop happening? No. They would happen in secret and there would be hundreds of thousands of illegal "backstreet circumcisions" - exactly as there used to be with abortion.
But let's take it a little further. Let's suppose that male circumcision was illegal and a mother DID want to abide by the law, but due to her religion / upbringing / culture / home life etc. the idea of her son having a foreskin caused her immense mental anguish. Therefore, one legal solution to her problem would be to abort the baby boy, rather than give birth to him and then be put through the mental anguish of not having the option of removing his foreskin following his birth. Would that be a better outcome?
I think not. This is why I feel we all need to be a bit more tolerant on issues like this. Parents are responsible for so much of what goes on in their children's lives, including choosing whether or not to allow that life to start. I find it difficult to get worked up about children being brought up in loving, caring yet religious environments, when 200,000 children a year aren't even given the chance to be born at all.
No, that is not the law. It is certainly illegal to have an abortion on the grounds of sex selection in and of itself.
If anybody was going to be prosecuted in the case the article refers to, it was the two doctors who agreed the abortion - not the mother who asked for it. They still may be prosecuted and, if they are, their defence will be that in their professional opinion not providing an abortion would have affected the mental wellbeing of the woman. Their defence would certainly not be that abortion on the grounds of sex selection is legal, because it isn't.
The reason the doctors weren't prosecuted was because it was felt that it "wasn't in the public interest" to prosecute - possibly because it would open up the can of worms we are discussing here.
> I think the limit should be brought down for on-demand abortions to about 12 or 14 weeks
The situation is that we have a woman who will suffer mental anguish if she does not have an abortion. So if we reduce the limit so that she has to suffer that mental anguish, then in her case we've effectively just removed the reason why the abortion law exists in the first place. This could re-introduce the problems that the abortion law was designed to solve, e.g. backstreet abortions. As the pro-choice Ann Furedi puts it "You can't be pro choice except when you don't like the choice".
> circumcision does not affect the parents, so forcing it on a child for no reason other than "we want to" is not the same
You may feel that "circumcision does not affect the parents" but that's a very big reason why parents do arrange for their boys to be circumcised - not for the boy, but for the parents; which is also a very big reason why many (prospective) parents arrange for an abortion - not for the child, but for the parents.
Let's suppose we made male circumcision illegal. Does that mean they would stop happening? No. They would happen in secret and there would be hundreds of thousands of illegal "backstreet circumcisions" - exactly as there used to be with abortion.
But let's take it a little further. Let's suppose that male circumcision was illegal and a mother DID want to abide by the law, but due to her religion / upbringing / culture / home life etc. the idea of her son having a foreskin caused her immense mental anguish. Therefore, one legal solution to her problem would be to abort the baby boy, rather than give birth to him and then be put through the mental anguish of not having the option of removing his foreskin following his birth. Would that be a better outcome?
I think not. This is why I feel we all need to be a bit more tolerant on issues like this. Parents are responsible for so much of what goes on in their children's lives, including choosing whether or not to allow that life to start. I find it difficult to get worked up about children being brought up in loving, caring yet religious environments, when 200,000 children a year aren't even given the chance to be born at all.
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