Sex-Selective Abortion: 1 More for the Road

It’s always amusing to watch someone writhing in the throes of a bogus Indignance High over something they’re widely known not to give a rat’s ass about.  For the Authoritarian Right, sex-selective abortion — the rare and weird practice of aborting female fetuses because daughters are seen as undesirable — is one such issue. While the more extreme Right routinely spirals into psychotic episodes over any kind of abortion, their claim to be concerned about this particular kind because it discriminates against females somehow doesn’t ring true.  After all, this is the same crowd that would force a now-20-year-old ex-fetus to carry a fetus of her own to term.

As I said in my “Bonus Track” back here, I find the “sex selective abortion” meme a little dubious at best.  Certainly it goes on, and where it does go on, no doubt it’s a foul practice. But I question whether it’s rampant enough in Canada to warrant the pandemic of pearl clutching it’s provoked in recent years.

It’s an issue that comes and goes.  But now, in the wake of Motion 312 and its companion Motion 408 — to “condemn sex selective abortion” — it’s back in all its hyperventilating, gasping glory.  And like clockwork, the relentless Blame Game has kicked off:

Fascist feminists!  And predictably, the persistent question:

Not that any feminist has ever claimed to support sex selective abortion, and one could only see it that way by wearing “With Us Or Against Us” blinders.  As for “not a single feminist” ever addressing the issue?  Puh-leeeeease! But when did these people ever let reality get in the way of a good outragegasm?

What’s dumbly perceived as “support” is simply consistency for those who agree with the current laissez-faire status of abortion in Canada.  I don’t actively “support” sex selection as a reason for an abortion; actually I think it’s a hideous reason.  But that’s my opinion and it’s irrelevant in the context of anyone else.  For good or ill, the reasons for an abortion are the business of the woman having it and nobody else: the decision is hers and hers alone to make.  I will always support whatever decision a woman makes: whether I “approve of” her reasons for making it is a non-issue.

And if those “fascist feminists” aren’t keeping up with the speed, volume and spittle-flecked fury of right-wing commentary on sex selective abortion, maybe it’s because they’re busy working to create the conditions that would render it non-existent: a world where women and girls are valued as much as anyone else.  And we could sure use some help!