Gender-selection abortion and the erosion of human rights

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15 May 2012

Richard Bastien

A recent editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal calling for delays in revealing the gender of a foetus to its parents ignited an intense debate on the practice of gender-selection abortion in certain cultural communities. Law-makers expressed surprise - even shock - at the revelation that this is happening here in Canada. The only thing that should surprise us is their surprise… and apparent ignorance.

In May 2010, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a motion titled “Sex-selective abortion – Gendercide” calling on member states to “condemn sex-selective abortion, wherever and whenever it occurs.” That motion listed a number of countries where the practice is most common, including "China (where, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Science, 124 boys are born for every 100 girls), India (where the ratio is similarly skewed), South Korea, Taiwan, but also some European countries” (emphasis added).

The PACE motion warned that the “gender imbalance" created by this ongoing "gendercide" could pose a serious threat to global security. "The selective pre-natal killing of females will in the near future lead to a further radical decline of birth rates, which could dangerously undermine the sustainability of entire national economies” it reads, warning that “large numbers of young males without any prospect of being able to find wives and founding families create a dangerous potential of social unrest, violence and political radicalization.”

Concern about gender-selection abortions is not limited to Europe. Last June a United Nations Interagency Report called for “renewed and concerted efforts…to address the deeply rooted gender discrimination against women and girls which lies at the heart of sex selection.” The agencies involved included the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.

Right here in Canada meanwhile, in a 2008 paper titled Why Canada Needs an Abortion Policy, the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies sounded an alarm over gender-selection abortions, citing domestic data that was already years old at that time.

Oddly, despite having labeled gender-selection abortion as nothing less than “gendercide" both the PACE motion and the UN Interagency Report continue to make the case for unfettered access to abortion.(In the case of PACE, this is implicit rather than explicit.) Having concluded that abortions based on a preference for a boy rather than a girl are a form of “gender discrimination,” a “threat for global security” and a threat to the “sustainability of entire national economies”, European parliamentarians and UN bureaucrats appear to be saying that abortions based on any other criterion are of no concern whatsoever.

In other words, gender-selection abortions are bad, not because they involve the killing of human beings, but because they violate gender equality.

Those who question the logic of this and similar arguments (for example, Canada's Supreme Court ruling that an unborn child cannot be considered a person with inherent rights until it has fully exited its mother's body) are typically accused of being, at best, simpletons, or at worse, dangerous ideologues bent on imposing their morality on the rest of society. In fact, the opposite is true. Only in an intellectual environment where ideology triumphs over common sense, and childish prattle is celebrated as deep thinking, is such a conclusion possible.

What, after all, does gender equality mean if not that male and female human beings are equally human? Is it not because being human trumps being male or female that we believe in gender equality? Is the fact of being human not more fundamental, more important, than that of being either male of female?

The argument that gender-selection abortion is abhorrent while abortion on all other grounds is OK is a perilous one. It subordinates humanity to a subset of humanity - in this case gender - challenging the very foundation upon which, not just gender equality, but racial equality as well, is based, i.e. the fact that males and females (or people of different races) are equally human and, as such, endowed with equal dignity and equal fundamental rights.

Which is precisely why so-called pro-choice advocates and their allies in the elite media are so intent on suppressing any meaningful discussion on the issue. They know that an intelligent, non-ideological debate will inevitably lead to Canada - where it is perfectly legal to kill a child as it is being born - rejoining the rest of the civilized world by legislating reasonable limits on abortion.

Unless that happens, pre-born little girls will continue to be disposed of like unwanted chattel by those who consider them to be less worthy of life than little boys.