Discriminatory abortions-should the state/community regulate them?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

This is something I've thought about before, but the thread on Eugenics reminded me about it. Abortion gives mothers and to a lesser extent fathers a right to control childbirth and protect autonomy of women, but there are cases where people discriminate and abort children for prejudicial or bigoted reasons. In other words, they would be more than happy to go through the experience of pregnancy to have a child, but they want to abort the baby because they would rather have a different "kind" of child.

Real world examples would be: In India and China, many parents abort female children because they would prefer a boy. This is such a problem that doctors in India cannot tell parents the gender of their children before they are born.

Parents today often also want to abort children with certain disabilities which are not life threatening, such as Downs Syndrome, in favor of a kid without it.

Hypothetical example would be: Parents 20 years in the future have some way of discovering if their children would be LGBTQ, and many abort babies with such conditions.

Is it ok (or even really practical) to regulate abortion in these cases? Is it a breach of the right of parental choice, and that since "choice" is an unassailable right, the community has no place telling a mother why she can or cannot abort a pregnancy?

So what's the answer here? Do we just let parents with reactionary or retrogressive beliefs have their right? Certainly, other "rights" are limited by social contexts as well (ie, free speech does not cover shouting fire in a crowded theatre, so why should the right of choice cover prejudice?) Could it be "regulated" in the manner of India, where certain procedure are banned which could lead to such an abortion to begin with (such as telling the gender of a child to the parents, which IMO is more effective anyways since its often difficult or impossible to prove motive)?

[Old Mole]

I think that it should be the circumstances that creates reactionary beliefs rather than the freedom to exercise them that needs to be changed. If we try to control people by saying "we dont allow you to do this", they will probably do it anyway. As marxists we should instead ask why people act in a certain way to find out how society should be changed. "Being a radical means going to the bottom with the question", as Marx said.

[Tim Finnegan]

Parents today often also want to abort children with certain disabilities which are not life threatening, such as Downs Syndrome, in favor of a kid without it.
Does this really constitute "bigotry"? Raising a severely disabled child is very hard work, especially in a society which offers little to no support. It doesn't seem to me to be any more necessarily indicative of bigotry than aborting a foetus simply because you don't wish to support a child at all.

[PhoenixAsh]

so...for arguments sake...how the hell do you want to establish the motivations for abortion??

How will you go about finding out if the mother is doing it out of her free will or if she is somehow forced by her husband, family, boyfriend etc?
How will you go about establishing thhat the motives for abortion are racial or sexist?

Personally...I think regulation is a bad idea.

Now if we are talking about government enforced abortions and financial pressure...yeah...I am completely opposed to abortions based on those motivators. The way to fight these however is not the government which enables these situations but through revolution.

[Terminator X]

It would be impossible to regulate abortions in this manner - what would be deemed an "acceptable" birth defect that would qualify as abortion-worthy? Downs syndrome, but not spina bifida? It would be a ridiculous intrusion into a woman's privacy.

[TC]

Anti-choicers are typically fine with abortion where the abortion is performed for reasons the anti-choicer feels are legitimate, such as saving the life or health of the pregnant woman, or rape, or severe disability in the embryo (all three reasons most anti-choicers endorse as 'correct' motives for abortion.)

To say that the community, state, society, god, or some abstract type of 'morality' should get to choose which pregnancies can be terminated and which must be carried to term - is to deny the bodily autonomy, social autonomy and inherent right of self defense to an unwillingly pregnant woman. Whatever your laundry list of acceptable and unacceptable reasons are, it is just as anti-choice as if you adopt the typical set of anti-choice acceptable reasons (life, health, rape, and deformity).

To be pro-choice is precisely to allow women to choose to terminate or continue their pregnancies even when you believe they ought to do otherwise - even when you think their reasons are illegitimate. Freedom to choose is never simply the freedom to choose reasons that others approve of but to make choices for your own reasons despite other's disapproval.


If a rural Chinese or Indian woman is only willing to have a boy (for entirely patriarchal reasons) and you force her to bear a female fetus against her will you turn her into a baby-making machine for your version of social progress just as readily as if your preference is blonde blue eyed fetuses - it is stripping a woman of her humanity. The fact that she might be socially conditioned into wanting a boy, and that this social conditioning is wrong, does not mean that she loses the right to control her own body.

[caramelpence]

Is it a breach of the right of parental choice

Access to abortion has nothing to do with "the right of parental choice", not only because describing pregnant women as "mothers" and non-pregnant men as "fathers" is a favored propaganda tactic of anti-choicers (to use the term of the last poster) but also because the right to choose shouldn't belong to the male who impregnated the woman, regardless of whether he's her long-term partner or her rapist, it should belong to the woman alone, because it is her body that is being used by the fetus for its own survival, and it's her personal autonomy that is being violated if we let the state or the man who impregnated her decide when and why she should be allowed to have an abortion.

I'd only point out, to add on to what the last poster said, that, when the state only allows abortion on certain grounds, that's not only incredibly destructive towards autonomy as such, in the sense that it's an inherent attack on the autonomy of all women regardless of whether they end up having abortions or not, it would also have secondary consequences that would be incredibly degrading for women who do actually want to have an abortion for the "right reasons", in that it would be necessary for them to prove that they actually meet those reasons. In Spain, for example, under the 1985 constitutional ruling on abortion law reform, the final legislation, which was adjusted from the original proposal to conform to the court ruling, made it obligatory for a woman to report a rape to the police if she wanted an abortion on the grounds of rape, which was one of the few grounds allowed, and she had to file the report (which would obviously involve the police taking her account) before being allowed to go ahead with the abortion itself. So, not only do "moderate" anti-choicers want to deny the autonomy of all women by letting the state make decisions on their behalf about when it's right or wrong to have an abortion, they also want particular women who are seeking an abortion to go through the ordeal of having to account for their circumstances, before they're allowed to exercise their bodily autonomy.

Also, son preference in rural China is a lot more complex and disputed than you make it out to be, despite it being a favorite point of attack for Western racists.

[Sword and Shield]

Also, son preference in rural China is a lot more complex and disputed than you make it out to be, despite it being a favorite point of attack for Western racists.

No it isn't... If China is anything like India, there is a lot of sexism involved when it comes to abortions. This is why ultrasound testing for gender is outlawed (though until they start sending doctors who perform gender testing to the gulag, it's not going to go away, and the Indian government won't do that).

[Tim Finnegan]

No it isn't... If China is anything like India, there is a lot of sexism involved when it comes to abortions. This is why ultrasound testing for gender is outlawed (though until they start sending doctors who perform gender testing to the gulag, it's not going to go away, and the Indian government won't do that).
You don't think it has anything to do with material conditions, for example, the fact that male children act as an insurance policy for old age, while female children are a net expense? I'm sure that these are both of no little relevance to people living in poverty.

[PhoenixAsh]

You don't think it has anything to do with material conditions, for example, the fact that male children act as an insurance policy for old age, while female children are a net expense? I'm sure that these are both of no little relevance to people living in poverty.

....in societies were women can not be married without a dowry or are not allowed to work or only allowed to work in certain jobs which pay relatively less than a mans job...this can put a serious drain on family economics to such an extend that its actually looked foreward to to mary off daughters asap...because they litterally are a economic burden. In vey poor families...if there are more girls...usually only one can be married simply because the family can not afford it.


One of my friends fathers was a doctor who worked in the Pakistani country side as part of a social program.

[TwoSevensClash]

To me its just another attempt by the right to prevent abortion by threating women with legal action. That if they can somehow "prove" you aborted for gender reasons they will throw you in jail.

[Sir Comradical]

I've never had any moral qualms about aborting a fetus if it has some kind of defect like Down Syndrome.

[caramelpence]

No it isn't... If China is anything like India, there is a lot of sexism involved when it comes to abortions. This is why ultrasound testing for gender is outlawed (though until they start sending doctors who perform gender testing to the gulag, it's not going to go away, and the Indian government won't do that).

China is not India, however much you may want to treat them in the same way when it comes to son preference. You clearly don't know much about the extent and causes of son preference in rural China but if you do a quick google search or look at the current demographic literature you will find there is not a consensus on how prevalent son preference actually is, both for rural China as a whole and for specific regions and provinces, and you will also find that the causative factors are a lot more complex and concrete than simply the existence of sexist ideas that allegedly float around in the ether or the impact of supposedly immutable cultural traditions - son preference is the result of material conditions as another poster said, specifically, it is the product of a combination of social and political factors, such as rural poverty and population control, that shape the preferences and incentives of rural families in ways that make sons more valuable as economic assets.


is it anti-choice to believe in any kind of restriction whatsoever

The issue is this - by allowing the state to decide on when and why women should be allowed to have abortions you are effectively saying that the woman should not be the ultimate arbiter on what her interests are and who or what should be allowed to make use of her body, and that the state has interests in her body that are so significant as to outweigh her own interests and decision-making. There are, of course, many instances where we have to adjudicate rights and interest claims, as in the examples you gave, but in this instance there is no actor or entity other than the woman that has a legitimate interest claim on her body.

[Johnny Panic]

This is all an end run around a womans right to her own body, This way they can try to regulate reasons (thought)

[Luís Henrique]

Real world examples would be: In India and China, many parents abort female children because they would prefer a boy. This is such a problem that doctors in India cannot tell parents the gender of their children before they are born.

The "choice" should be the woman's choice - not her husband, her father, her father-in-law, her older brother, or any other family, male or female. Evidently, this can be difficult to sort out in practice, but to support abortions that are imposed into young women by their spouses, relatives or inlaws goes against whatever meaningful notion of female bodily autonomy one might hold.


Parents today often also want to abort children with certain disabilities which are not life threatening, such as Downs Syndrome, in favor of a kid without it.

I see no problem with that, especially not in a society where children care is completely private. It is not like you are going to have collective support to raise a disabled child, so the decision about having it or not should be as private as the trouble you would have raising the child.


Hypothetical example would be: Parents 20 years in the future have some way of discovering if their children would be LGBTQ, and many abort babies with such conditions.

I sincerely doubt it is ever going to be possible to diagnose homosexuality in unborns.


Is it a breach of the right of parental choice, and that since "choice" is an unassailable right, the community has no place telling a mother why she can or cannot abort a pregnancy?

Until the "community" - and I don't believe in the existence of "communities" in capitalist societies - is willing to take actual care of children, I can see no entitlement for anyone else to meddle in the issue.

Luís Henrique

[EdgyandOriginal]

It is my belief that foetus' are beings of little or no moral significance. I am not a speciesist, I don't think a foetus has any inherent right to life due to its genetic code. Therefore, we should be making these decisions based upon what the being is actually like.

When weighing the interests or preferences of a foetus against those of the mother, the mother’s superior intelligence, ability to suffer and perceive the future dictate that the mother’s decision to kill the foetus will always have more weight than the foetus’ preference for living.

So the state really has no business intervening. Furthermore, the only way to combat any prejudice is to educate and change the social conditions in which people live, not by enforcing authoritarian control.

[MattShizzle]

No. A fetus is not worthy of consideration and detecting things other than race (which would be known anyway) and serious genetic disorders is far future.