Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare has issued new guidelines under which doctors cannot refuse to perform abortions through the 18th week of pregnancy for any reason, including sex selection.
You should know from the outset that I believe abortion is wrong in all circumstances, except in cases of medical necessity to preserve the mother’s life. I think the evidence reveals beyond a reasonable doubt that unborn babies are people too and we simply don’t kill people – even small people – indiscriminately (well we do, but we shouldn’t). But I also think that even if you are in favor of abortions in certain situations, you have to wonder what in the Helsingborg this Board has been smoking. How can a Board of physicians – which, even in Sweden, has a duty to draft its policies on the basis of something more than expedience - say it’s a-okay by them to eliminate people on the basis of gender? This practice has been condemned by virtually every human rights body on the planet as a form of genocide, yet Sweden is happily declaring it legal. Where’s a good UN Human Rights Council Resolution when you need one?
A doctor and his assistant were sent to jail for telling patients they could “take care of” unborn babies who were of the wrong sex – i.e., who were girls. Sex selection abortions have been banned in India since 1994.
Dr. Vinary Agarwal, president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) responding to the sentences, said, “”The medical profession is doing all it can though we have to address this as a social evil.”
Now, that’s my kind of medical board. Who would have thought India’s physicians to be far more progressive in terms of protecting basic human rights than Sweden’s?
In the US, however…
The jury is still out. We haven’t formally banned the practice (yet – see HR 1822), but we certainly don’t endorse it. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists used to say sex-selection abortion is “innapropriate” – something akin to popping gum at the opera, I suppose. Their newly scrubbed revised document ”opposes meeting requests for sex selection for personal and family reasons…because…such requests may ultimately support sexist practices.” It’s not exactly India, but thankfully, it’s not Sweden either. But it does prompt me to ask: Why are people so afraid to approach the sacred cow of abortion? Are they really afraid that if they say abortion is just flat-out wrong in some cases, they will have caved in to the right-wing fringe? If so, they’re giving the right-wing fringe much more credit than they deserve. Where is the voice of reason? For that matter, where are the feminists on this issue? After all, in most countries where sex-selection abortion is practiced, the victims are female. But there’s no outcry because there’s no interfering with one’s veneration of the sacred cow…unless, ironically, you’re in India.
