It's pretty clear that sex-selective abortion is currently Constitutionally protected by Roe v. Wade and subsequent Supreme Court decisions. Abortion supporters need to grapple with the fact that hundreds of millions of babies have been aborted solely because they were girls.
Sex-selection abortion occurs in America, too, and the practice is likely to increase. In August, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that a simple blood test seven weeks into pregnancy can reliably identify the sex of the child. Watch for a spike in abortion rates over the next few years as parents find it easier and cheaper to "choose" to have a boy by killing the fetus if--in a bitter reversal of an expression of joy--"it's a girl."The shocking reality of sex-selection abortion cries out for laws banning the practice. Polls have shown that about 95 percent of the American people oppose sex-selection abortion. Even those who style themselves "pro-choice" overwhelmingly agree that abortion should not be allowed when the reason for such a choice is that the child to be born is female. The most pernicious radical feminist argument for abortion rights--that abortion is essential for "gender equality"--doubles back on itself in the case of sex-selection abortion: if abortion on the basis of the sex of the child--killing girls because they are not boys--is not sex discrimination, it is hard to know what is. (Hvistendahl is, awkwardly, pro-choice, yet horrified by the consequences of "unnatural selection.")
Four states--Illinois, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and most recently Arizona--have enacted laws prohibiting sex-selection abortion. Those laws have yet to be tested in the courts. At least seven other states have considered bills that would ban the practice. A sex-selection-ban bill was introduced in Congress in 2009--I worked with committee staff on the bill--but it died in the then Democrat-controlled House.
When the Supreme Court visits the issue of sex-selective abortion it could bring down the whole house of cards that began with Roe.
