Thursday, May 31, 2012
Sex-selection abortion ban = anti-Asian?
We are told that today's GOP is becoming a whites-only affair. How did this come to pass? Well, according to Dana Millbank, it's due in part to Republicans' insistence on proposing legislation to ban sex-selection abortions. Such a law, in the view of Rep. Barbara Lee, would "lead to further stigmatization of women, especially Asian Pacific American women." Millbank writes that the problem "is that it's not entirely clear there is a problem" with sex-selection abortion in the U.S. He acknowledges that "[s]ex-selection abortion is a huge tragedy in parts of Asia, but to the extent it's happening in this country, it's mostly among Asian immigrants." I'm not sure I follow Millbank's logic. It's not clear it's a problem in this country, but (or because?) it's happening "mostly among Asian immigrants?" Or does the fact that the practice is concentrated among a particular minority group mean that legislation targeting the practice is inescapably discriminatory? As Millbank puts it, this is "paternalism toward minority groups," and may cause the GOP to "lose Asian Americans."
Perhaps there are other flaws in the proposed legislation (which apparently has little chance of passing the House), but I'm having a very hard time seeing the bill as anti-Asian. If the political community deems a practice morally odious and unacceptable, why does the prudence of its legal prohibition depend on the concentration of its practitioners within a particular racial or immigrant group? We would not hesitate to use law to try to prevent the custom of sati from taking root in the United States -- i.e., a widow throwing herself on her husband's funeral pyre -- even if practitioners tended to be concentrated within immigrant Hindu communities. So why does a bill banning sex-selection abortion automatically become part of the "GOP for whites only" narrative?
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2012/05/sex-selection-abortion-ban-anti-asian.html
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Well, first of all, here's the part of Milbank's piece that leaps out at me: "Franks admitted he had no expectation that his latest bill would pass, because House leaders brought it up in a way that required a two-thirds majority. The purpose, he said, was to force pro-abortion-rights Democrats to make an uncomfortable vote." So why should we take this bill seriously at all? It's not an attempt to pass a law. It's an attempt to embarrass pro-choice Democrats.
This bill started out as the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011, purporting "to prohibit discrimination against the unborn on the basis of sex or race, and for other purposes." The racial aspect was dropped. While of course some people claim that legalized abortion is a genocidal plot against blacks, has anyone ever heard of a case where a woman aborted a child because of its race? Do black women have a high rate of abortion because the babies will be born black?
There are two questions one has to ask about a law like this. One is whether there is actually a problem that the law will remedy. Here's a a good article from the Washington Post about that.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/congress-debates-ban-on-sex-selective-abortions-as-researchers-explore-how-often-they-happen/2012/05/30/gJQAwhpN2U_blog.html
The second question is, since a woman seeking an abortion (in the first trimester) does not have to give (or even have) a reason, how is anyone going to know she is having an abortion because of the gender of her child? How can such a law be enforced? Also, as is perfectly predictable of a pro-life law, a woman having an abortion for the purpose of sex selection is exempt from any and all provisions of the law. So abortion providers are put in jeopardy by this law, but not women seeking abortion.
Now, there is a reporting requirement: "A physician, physician’s assistant, nurse, counselor, or other medical or mental health professional shall report known or suspected violations of any of this section to appropriate law enforcement authorities. Whoever violates this requirement shall be
fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 1 year, or both."
What exactly does that mean? I don't know, but given the fact that it is in Asian cultures that abortion for sex selection is most widely practiced, who is most likely to fall under suspicion for seeking an abortion for sex selection? White women? Or even black women? This law, it seems to me, would have the effect of encouraging, at least to some extent, "racial profiling" on the part of abortion providers. Women from cultures where abortion for sex-selection is practiced in their countries of origin would inevitably be the most likely suspects for having sex-selection abortions in the United States. (Question: Would abortion providers be permitted legally to refuse a woman an abortion unless she signed a sworn statement that it was not for the purposes of sex selection? I don't know. Perhaps someone reading this can answer.) So it seems to me if abortion providers wanted to be exceedingly cautious, they would be wary of providing abortion for Asian women.
Rob says: "We would not hesitate to use law to try to prevent the custom of sati from taking root in the United States -- i.e., a widow throwing herself on her husband's funeral pyre -- even if practitioners tended to be concentrated within immigrant Hindu communities."
Why not ban it now? Do you suppose those in immigrant Hindu communities would be pleased if we banned it before there was evidence it was actually happening? Do you suppose American Muslims would not mind if we preemptively banned practices that take place in Muslim countries that don't happen in the United States? Might they not feel a certain sense of being singled out?
While I don't consider myself a member of the "pro-life" movement, I am very much opposed to, and appalled by, abortion for sex selection. But I think this is a ridiculous law. It is perfectly schizophrenic, in my opinion, to try to ban abortions for very specific reasons without putting at least *some* legal burden on women who seek them out. The message of this law is that abortion for sex-selection is forbidden to everyone . . . except women who have them. The law really can't be enforced, and yet it does put abortion providers in jeopardy, since they can be sued by a woman's relatives if the relatives believe the woman voluntarily had an abortion for sex-selection and the abortion provider knew it. Again, I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me to leave open the very distinct possibility that a woman can, of her own free will, have an abortion for the purpose of sex selection, and can then tell her husband and have him sue the abortionist for performing the abortion the woman freely sought.
Here's the thing. Pro-lifers invent every kind of law they can think of to try to place burdens and restrictions on abortion, and then when people who are pro-choice (or just plain reasonable) attempt to block them, they get smeared by pro-lifers. It seems to me this is just a bad law, but anyone who votes against it will be accused of not caring about "gendercide" against baby girls. This is not serious legislation. It's another skirmish in the "culture war" (just like the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act was). This law, if passed, would not save one life. It's all a politica game over a hot-button political issue. It's almost not even about abortion.