I don’t quite agree with the part about the stigma: I’d rather provide information (on pp methods, on pregnancy, on parenthood) and access to pregnancy prevention methods.
But as several posters said, to me all of that applies whatever the woman’s reason for wanting an abortion is. When it comes to the ability to have the abortion it is her opinion that matters, not mine. There are some reasons I find revolting, some I find eyerolling, some I find facesmacking and some I find just damn sad - that is my problem, not hers.
There should not be legal restrictions on abortions. I wouldn’t support abortion in this case, but I’m not the one who’s pregnant. That’s her decision to make.
To me the woman has been made a ‘god’ for that fetus by God (big G god). She is the sustainer of life for that child and the child’s entire universe for that time. She is the one to decide (as God has allowed that procedure to exist and provided for the legality and availability of it), and her motives will be evaluated by God and both mother and child will be steered towards learning God’s ways through this experience as needed by both.
Eugenics is a slippery slope. Where do we draw the line? There are clear reasons to terminate if fetal testing shows a medical condition which means a baby would only suffer horribly before dying. But if we consider traits like homosexuality, what about hair and eye color? Athletic or musical ability? Height and weight? Scientific aptitude? Financially motivated? Service oriented? Conservative? Progressive?
Do we want to head down the path of designer babies? Aside from moral issues, lack of genetic variety, re-mixing, and the possibility of adaptive mutations typically spells the beginning of the end for a species.
At the same time, of course the reality is not that simple… personality and aptitude are also influenced by environmental factors – not just “how they’re raised” but including factors like the hormonal mix the fetus is exposed to in utero, which has as much to do with the mother’s body chemistry, genetics, and environmental conditions she’s exposed to as the fetus’s.
And ultimately I think education and cultural taboo will be stronger motivators than laws, anyway. If we’re culturally imparting the values that deeming some non-harmful traits as inferior is a shitty thing to do, fewer people will want to.
That said, given that such a test is extremely unlikely to be very accurate – there are too many variables to account for, some inside and some outside the womb – I think aborting a “gay baby” vs. a “straight” one would be different only in those parents’ minds. They’d show themselves to be bigots but the odds that their fetus would have been gay would be functionally the same as the random chance we have now. As bigots they’re probably better off not being parents to anyone anyway. So no, I wouldn’t support such a law.
Not sure if it’s been made clear, but the question is kind of a moot point. Legally anyway.
Baring things like medical issues, rape, and the length of term, a woman either is or isn’t allowed to legally have an abortion. IOW her specific reason isn’t a factor, it isn’t even ever going to be asked. And, IMO anyway, I think that in nearly 100% of cases the reason is simply going to be ‘Because I don’t want to have a child now’, not ‘I don’t want to have a gay, male, female, black, chinese etc. child’. And I don’t really see this changing in the future. Women (and couples) wanting specific kinds of babies are not really much of a thing. I mean, not to the point of aborting one if it isn’t a girl or boy etc. at least. Not in Western cultures I hope anyway…
Medical issues and rape are specific reasons. If Roe v. Wade was overturned tomorrow the vast majority of states would have abortion bans with specific exceptions.
Also, if such a law passed, anti-abortion legislation would come along to use it as a lever to prevent all abortions. Prospective patients would be made to prove that they weren’t aborting for reasons of sexual-preference-selection. It would become a new hurdle that the patient would have to overcome.