HotAir Props
Amanda Carpenter makes this the Hot Button issue at the Washington Times today, and it provides an interesting juxtaposition to a post I wrote last month. Sweden has approved gender-specific abortions, allowing parents to rid themselves of an unwanted daughter in a closely-watched ethics case:
Swedish women will be permitted to abort their children based on the sex of the fetus, according to a ruling by Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare.
The ruling was spurred by a request from Kai Wedenberg, head of the clinic where a woman twice requested, and received, an abortion based on sex.
Mr. Wedenberg asked for clarification from health officials after a woman, who already had two girls, requested amniocentesis and to be told the sex of her unborn child. She found out she was pregnant with another girl and asked for an abortion six days later.
The woman then became pregnant again, returned to the clinic and asked for another amniocentesis, which was not performed. Later, at her ultrasound, she asked the nurse to reveal the sex of her fetus, which was a girl. After learning this, the mother requested an abortion later that day and received it later that week.
Last month, I noted the opposition of the abortion-rights group Center for Reproductive Rights to the same practice in China, where the state’s one-child policy makes gender selection more important for parents. Sweden has no such restrictions; in this case, the woman already had two daughters and wants a son. CRR opposed the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, putting their fright over what they call “fetus rights” over their objections to gender-specific infanticide.
At least Sweden remained consistent. Unlike the CRR, their decision reluctantly noted that the woman’s motivation was irrelevant if one accepts that someone can “choose” to end human life as a right. One wonders whether CRR will protest this decision in Sweden as they do in China, extending their intellectual confusion over the nature of “choice” as an absolute right.
