Sex selection abortion and the boomerang effect of a woman's right to choose: a paradox of the skeptics.

This article is about challenging women to think about what women do to women by disregarding or failing to consider long term social consequences of reproductive alternatives, particularly sex selection abortion.“Selective pregnancy reduction,” a medical procedure used to reduce a multiple pregnancy, often a multiple pregnancy induced by in vitro fertilization or drug therapy, combined with genetic technology and prenatal testing have allowed parents to choose numerous qualities and characteristics of their children, even to the point of “designing” their babies. Though sex selection technology can be achieved in numerous forms, this article will focus on the choice of abortion to plan the gender of a child. Sex selection abortion, or sex preselection as it may also be labeled, is rapidly becoming an acceptable family planning alternative for Americans.Most sociological polling research on birth order preference strongly suggests that because males are preferred as first borns, female babies will be the first to be reduced. Indeed, this has already occurred in many Asian nations. Sex selection abortion and female infanticide are widely known to be the most utilized method of family planning in India, China, and many other Asian countries. In these countries, sex selection abortion contributes to an already unbalanced sex ratio occasioned by neglect of female children. It could be easily chronicled that women are not gaining respect and power by increasing their numbers, and yet this article seeks to show that neither is it an evil patriarchy that is inhibiting women from conception to birth. Rather, the culpability lies with biologically-adult women in a pop-culture that values abortion on demand for any reason, even if that reason be that an unborn woman is “unwanted.” Given the well-documented societal preference for male children - and the fact that millions of women, as well as men, in the western world, not just third world countries, still react to the births of daughters with disappointment, sorrow, and even economic and social penalties - the potential widespread commercial availability of sex preselection techniques opens up ominous possibilities. A critical account of the feminist plank of abortion on demand's boomerang effect has only recently been popularly advanced, and not yet fully exposed in the national legal conversation. The goal of this article is to illuminate the backlash against the female gender inherent in the alternative of sex selection abortion, proving the disempowerment of pro-choice rhetoric and the disadvantage that Roe v. Wade and its progeny present to women in particular, and, as a result, to American society in general.Women must bridge the chasm between feminist jurisprudence on abortion, and the truth of the legal precedent in light of current technology and culture. Women must determine to take back control, not through insistence upon autonomy via medical technology, not through anger or United Nations “legislation,” but by maintaining strength, self-control, and wisdom, free of self-centered choice. This article will use sex selection abortion to expose the disempowerment of the philosophy and rhetoric of choice. Section One begins with a philosophical framework for gender equality, and the liberal twist on liberty. Section Two discusses how this frame-work was the basis for the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, and further analyzes the concept of gendercide through abortion in light of these constitutional parameters. The current state of selective pregnancy reduction and other opportunities for genetic selection of offspring characteristics are examined in Section Three, while Section Four discusses the cultural and medical aspects of reproductive technology and the subconscious development of gendercide. This will set the stage for Section Five which will detail sociological studies on sex preference and birth order among American parents, and related socio-cultural material. Section Six reviews the case law in the area of abortion and relevant regulation thereof, and Section Seven confronts the problem of gender protection due to the lack of regulation of abortion providers. The conclusion challenges all women in general, and women's right activists in particular, to cross the invisible abortion line that may have been drawn in the sand, to act nobly in favor of women, despite the right or opportunity to choose to terminate a pregnancy.An important objective of this article is to reach out to the feminist community with a concern for women as a gender, from women who are not represented by the feminist movement, but nonetheless are extremely concerned for women, their welfare, and for a civilized society where responsible liberty reigns. This article will review how women are victimized by other women's free exercise of self-centered and unlimited personal liberty. The salient point is that sex selection abortion is illustrative of the fact that abortion in general is destructive to women. What was once hailed as the choice that would free all women has come to shackle the future of women as a gender. Every woman can make a difference, and every woman deserves that opportunity, even in the face of being sent to the back of the bus, or being forced out of the womb.