Earlier this week, in Sweden, health authorities ruled that gender based abortions are a legal and legitimate practice. A woman, who already had two daughters, requested to know the gender of her pending pregnancy. Six days after it was revealed that she was carrying a girl inside her womb, she had her extracted and terminated, aborted. I wonder how many childless parents out there might have loved to raise that baby.
Doctors at the Malaren Hospital, where the procedure was performed, were concerned with the woman's request, but the board responded that up until the 18th week, abortions cannot be denied. What exactly it is that transpires at the 19th week, that makes that child anymore valuable, is a mystery to me.
Throughout history, sex-selective abortions have been evident, mostly in societies which the males role is pivotal to that cultures tradition or survival. Usually the female would be forced to deliver the child, to recognize its gender, before destroying it. Thanks to modern day sonography and amniocentesis, the babies sex can be revealed long before then, making its disposal a minimal procedure.
For people like myself, who are repulsed and saddened to learn of an aborted baby for any reason, sex-selective abortion seems more concerning. The simple reason is, the mother, undoubtedly wants a child, she believes that what she is carrying is viable, its just the wrong gender. This seems far more callus than the woman who has no intention of giving birth. But then, isn't that the viable gestation argument, what's the difference between the 18th and 19th week?
I do not believe, for one moment, that gender will be the only cause for termination, as the wonders of science advance, so does our moral responsibility. Soon infants will be destroyed in the search for genetic perfection, and all its potential. Height, beauty, color, IQ, immunity, strength, what's to quell the thirst to design a super human? Sex-selective abortion is infanticide.
Let us pretend that this isn't a looming prospect for the Obama administration, let us suspend belief and argue that America would never agree to let that happen. Of course they will, just not under such a blatantly obvious name. Within the near future, and in spite of the bias main stream media, we will begin to realize that women are not going to carry unwanted genders to term. Thus, the search for the perfect offspring has begun, if it hasn't already.
