sex selection – Leaven for the Loaf

Last week, Representatives Hall in the New Hampshire State House was filled with pro-life testimony against an anti-life constitutional amendment. Just one week later, the same kind of showing is called for, this time for pro-life legislation.

On Wednesday, January 29, the House Judiciary Committee – same committee as last week – will hold public hearings on a bill to protect infants who are born alive after attempted abortion (HB 1675-FN) and a prenatal nondiscrimination act to prohibit abortion on the grounds of sex selection or genetic anomaly (HB 1678-FN). Time: 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. respectively.

It’s time for another pro-life crowd in Representatives Hall. I suspect these bills will draw the abortion advocates who stayed away from last week’s hearing, although perhaps not all of them will object to the born-alive bill. In any case, showing up matters.

HB 1678, the prenatal nondiscrimination act, is a head-on attack on the attitude that it’s better to be dead than disabled or “unwanted.” If you or someone you love is living with a genetic anomaly including Down syndrome, sharing your story might help open a legislator’s mind and heart.

As for the born-alive bill, remember that the neck-snipping done by Kermit Gosnell in Pennsylvania could be done in New Hampshire with impunity. A New Hampshire born-alive act from about twenty years ago contained no penalties for abortion providers who fail to care for born-alive children.

There are two other life-issue bills on the Judiciary calendar for that morning, which I will not be attending or working on in view of the afternoon’s hearings. Those are a heartbeat bill (HB 1475-FN) and a bill to amend the parental notification statute regarding abortions for minors (HB 1640-FN, to remove the judicial bypass portion of the law).

Let’s see if we can get the legislators to support caring for born children via born-alive legislation. Let’s get them to turn thumbs-down to sex selection abortions. Let them publicly reject better-dead-than-disabled.

That’ll be a good day’s work.

Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men

by Mara Hvistendahl (2011: PublicAffairs/Perseus Book Group, eISBN 978-1-586-48991-5)

What can a pro-choice science journalist do when she sees a Chinese classroom with a surprisingly large proportion of boys? Mara Hvistendahl started asking questions, and she wound up going all over the world to find out why some cultures value one gender over another. Abortion was an inescapable part of her findings.

A culture that prefers one gender over another is, of necessity, not a culture of life. Hvistendahl reports on what she found in South Korea, India, China, and the United States. One troubling observation after another forces author and reader alike to examine how culture influences personal choices, and vice versa. Gender imbalance and the search for the perfect child, including in the United States, leave us with phenomena like sex-trafficking, bride-buying, and “designer babies.”

The author takes note more than once of how abortion “rights” and gender rights are both linked and opposed. “A woman should have the right to terminate a pregnancy, but she should not have the right to shape the individual represented by that pregnancy to her own whims.” [emphasis added] Hvistendahl is candid about her pro-choice beliefs even as she acknowledges the ambivalence caused by the data she discovered.

This is a long book, but it makes for quick reading. It’s written by a woman who is accustomed to writing about scientific topics for mass-circulation publications. She wears her pro-choice preference on her sleeve, but that doesn’t keep her from being taken aback by what she finds around the world. This is an important book not only for the information it provides, but also for the glimpse it gives the reader into the mind and heart of the author. She’s an abortion advocate honest enough to raise an eyebrow at some of the implications of her own beliefs.

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Check out these Basic Books from earlier posts:

Unplanned by Abby Johnson

Deadly Compassion by Rita Marker

Aborted Women: Silent No More by David C. Reardon

Aborting America by Bernard Nathanson, M.D.

Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery by Eric Metaxas

Planned Bullyhood by Karen Handel