# If an American woman keeps aborting female babies to get a boy should that be OK legally? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 30, 2010, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066 "2010-06-30T15:01:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/41 "2010-06-30T19:35:14Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > You realize that your perception of a fetus as an “unborn child” is purely a religious belief, do you not? How so? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/42 "2010-06-30T19:36:55Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#): > > Yes, it’s legal. > > I would have little respect for such a woman. And for her husband–because this sort of thing occurs in strongly patriarchal societies & he probably influenced her decision. I agree that its legal (and ignorant) but its not the selfish husband that is pressuring her to have sons (or at least its not JUST the husband). I can see a lot of pressure from her parents, in-laws, and her desire to have sons to improve her status within her family. The motive for the abortion makes the abortion more morally wrong than it would be without the sex selection motive but that doesn’t make it illegal. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/43 "2010-06-30T19:37:40Z")
> [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > Yes, it should be okay, legally. However, she should probably be committed into permanent psychiatric care, complete with straight jacket and rubber room, because she’d obviously be somewhat less than sane. Using psychiatry to punish people? How very… Soviet of you. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/44 "2010-06-30T19:37:51Z")
I don’t know **how** you could make abortion for a specific reason, like sex selection, illegal. How would you enforce this? (ETA: I guess **Marley23** already made this point back in Post #14.) ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/45 "2010-06-30T19:41:50Z")
> [@villa](#): > > Even if I accept the rest of what you are saying, the idea of the United States as a matriarchal society is ludicrous. I didn’t mean to imply that we were matriarchal. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/46 "2010-06-30T19:42:40Z")
> [@Bosstone](#): > > Must it be an all or nothing? > > I support abortion for necessity. When it comes to medical complications in either the mother or the fetus, or inability to support a child, the mother comes before the fetus every time. But aborting because you don’t like the gender of the child or some other aesthetic or cosmetic reason is an unnecessary waste, and I wouldn’t really have a problem with a line drawn in the legal sand there. I think a lot of people think its all or nothing. Almost everyone is at least a little bit uncomfortable with the notion of sex selective abortion and we all wish that the world was perfect enough that we would never have to choose whether or not to carry a child with genetic defects to term. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/47 "2010-06-30T19:45:34Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I don’t know **how** you could make abortion for a specific reason, like sex selection, illegal. How would you enforce this? A first step, which doesn’t require banning abortion, and which some hospitals in London are already doing, is to stop telling the sex of the child to the parents. I presume this policy is waived if there are valid medical reasons to want to know the sex. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/48 "2010-06-30T20:01:23Z")
> [@QuarkChild](#): > > But this trend of sex-selective abortions in favor of male children due to the preferences of certain immigrants is probably compensated for (or even overcompensated for) by a preference for girl babies among non-immigrants here. I read an article recently–see the link below–that claimed that sex-selection procedures (not abortion, but the test-tube conception kind) tend to be used to produce female children by a ratio of 2-1. > > [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/) So, in the USA, the “extra” males should be able to find wives. Perhaps outside their own ethnic groups, which isn’t really rare in America (or in any diverse society). If this distresses their parents, tough. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/49 "2010-06-30T20:07:11Z")
[quote=“WhyNot, post:16, topic:545066”] Not to mention, leaves a lot of horny young men with no prospects for wives, pushing them to seek less savory sexual and political outlets. I believe that China is importing brides from places like Burma, Mongolia, and other less prosperous Asian nations (Japan and Korea did the same thing for a while (much less so recently as people stopped getting hung up on having children with penises. > [@](#): > > But I don’t think it should be made illegal. I think, should it become a likely widespread problem in the US, we should consider incentives, like extra money for girls’ education, or social pressure to stop it, but not the law. I think if we provided more support for young mothers we could prevent many of the abortions we have today. Just make the world a place where having a child doesn’t derail your life and I bet fewer women have abortions generally. But thats not going to happen either. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/50 "2010-06-30T20:11:18Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > How so? I see it as more of a semantic than philosophical difference. Child is defined as > [@](#): > > A human being, male or female, between birth and puberty or some close variant thereof in the primary definition of most dictionaries, thus “unborn child” is an oxymoron. Also, “unborn child”- at least to me- implies that “if born, it would be a child”, whereas even with the absolute best available care that’s not true until the end of the second trimester at the very earliest (and even then it’s far from certain). ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/51 "2010-06-30T20:11:51Z")
Heck, at this stage Japan needs all the babies it can get. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/52 "2010-06-30T20:14:52Z")
> [@villa](#): > > A first step, which doesn’t require banning abortion, and which some hospitals in London are already doing, is to stop telling the sex of the child to the parents. I presume this policy is waived if there are valid medical reasons to want to know the sex. I don’t support this. A child born to parents who don’t want it is not something I’m in favor of at all. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/53 "2010-06-30T20:19:36Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > I don’t support this. A child born to parents who don’t want it is not something I’m in favor of at all. I’m not a fan of it either. I was just commenting one doesn’t need to sacrifice abortion rights in order to limit abortions to pick a sex. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/54 "2010-06-30T20:23:32Z")
Of course it should. It’s disgusting that someone should do so, but it’s still legal. (By “disgusting”, I mean it’s insanely selfish and sexist – and I’d feel the same way if said woman was aborting male fetuses. It reeks of the whole “designer baby” idea.) ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/55 "2010-06-30T20:31:29Z")
> [@villa](#): > > I’m not a fan of it either. I was just commenting one doesn’t need to sacrifice abortion rights in order to limit abortions to pick a sex. I thought a “right” by definition was something one could practice without having to explain why. I could paint a portrait to express the inner torment of my soul, or to sell it for money. Why would I have to explain to someone why I chose to exercise my right to freedom of expression and invite sneering from people who don’t believe in souls or who speak disparagingly of profit motives? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/56 "2010-06-30T20:31:33Z")
What’s wrong with designer babies? Who’s the victim? ---
**Author:** ![wwworldclique](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/bcef8e/32.png) [@wwworldclique](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wwworldclique)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/57 "2010-06-30T20:34:34Z")
Abortions performed to “select gender” should be illegal. It smacks of eugenics. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/58 "2010-06-30T20:34:52Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > What’s wrong with designer babies? Who’s the victim? There is no victim. But I find it a wee too close to eugenics. (I’m thinking of the whole “if you found out your child would be gay, would you abort/change it in the womb/etc” threads). It just makes me uneasy. And, as I said, it’s sexist. ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/59 "2010-06-30T20:35:51Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I don’t know **how** you could make abortion for a specific reason, like sex selection, illegal. How would you enforce this? I didn’t think that was part of the question. > [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > What’s wrong with designer babies? Who’s the victim? The rejects. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066/60 "2010-06-30T20:37:06Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > What’s wrong with designer babies? Who’s the victim? Ugly people who’d have to compete, I guess. Personally, I’m okay with trying seek genetic advantage for my child. It can’t be worse than assuming they’re special and magical and indiglo or whatever and spend their childhood lying to them about how good they are at everything in order to inflate their self-esteem. Fuck that shit - I’d prefer my kids use their genetic enhancements to super-soldier their way across the surface of the Earth and enslave the underclasses. That would make me _so_ proud. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-an-american-woman-keeps-aborting-female-babies-to-get-a-boy-should-that-be-ok-legally/545066.md?page=4)