A BILL 
To prohibit discrimination against the unborn on the basis 
of sex or race, and for other purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Prenatal Non-
discrimination Act (PRENDA) of 2013’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS AND CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY. 
(a) FINDINGS.—The Congress makes the following 
findings: 
(1) SEX DISCRIMINATION FINDINGS.— 
(A) Women are a vital part of American 
society and culture and possess the same funda-
mental human rights and civil rights as men. 
(B) United States law prohibits the dis-
similar treatment of males and females who are 
similarly situated and prohibits sex discrimina-
tion in various contexts, including the provision 
of employment, education, housing, health in-
surance coverage, and athletics. 
(C) Sex is an immutable characteristic as-
certainable at the earliest stages of human de-
velopment through existing medical technology 
and procedures commonly in use, including ma-
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ternal-fetal 
bloodstream 
DNA 
sampling, 
amniocentesis, chorionic villus sampling or 
‘‘CVS’’, and obstetric ultrasound. In addition to 
medically assisted sex determination, a growing 
sex-determination niche industry has developed 
and is marketing low-cost commercial products, 
widely advertised and available, that aid in the 
sex determination of an unborn child without 
the aid of medical professionals. Experts have 
demonstrated that the sex-selection industry is 
on the rise and predict that sex selection will 
continue to be a growing trend in the United 
States. Sex determination is always a necessary 
step to the procurement of a sex-selection abor-
tion. 
(D) A ‘‘sex-selection abortion’’ is an abor-
tion undertaken for purposes of eliminating an 
unborn child of an undesired sex. Sex-selection 
abortion is barbaric, and described by scholars 
and civil rights advocates as an act of sex-based 
or gender-based violence, predicated on sex dis-
crimination. Sex-selection abortions are typi-
cally late-term abortions performed in the 2d or 
3rd trimester of pregnancy, often after the un-
born child has developed sufficiently to feel 
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pain. Substantial medical evidence proves that 
an unborn child can experience pain at 20 
weeks after conception, and perhaps substan-
tially earlier. By definition, sex-selection abor-
tions do not implicate the health of the mother 
of the unborn, but instead are elective proce-
dures motivated by sex or gender bias. 
(E) The targeted victims of sex-selection 
abortions performed in the United States and 
worldwide are overwhelmingly female. The se-
lective abortion of females is female infanticide, 
the intentional killing of unborn females, due to 
the preference for male offspring or ‘‘son pref-
erence’’. Son preference is reinforced by the low 
value associated, by some segments of the world 
community, with female offspring. Those seg-
ments tend to regard female offspring as finan-
cial burdens to a family over their lifetime due 
to their perceived inability to earn or provide fi-
nancially for the family unit as can a male. In 
addition, due to social and legal convention, fe-
male offspring are less likely to carry on the 
family name. ‘‘Son preference’’ is one of the 
most evident manifestations of sex or gender 
discrimination in any society, undermining fe-
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male equality, and fueling the elimination of fe-
males’ right to exist in instances of sex-selection 
abortion. 
(F) Sex-selection abortions are not ex-
pressly prohibited by United States law or the 
laws of 46 States. Sex-selection abortions are 
performed in the United States. In a March 
2008 report published in the Proceedings of the 
National Academy of Sciences, Columbia Uni-
versity economists Douglas Almond and Lena 
Edlund examined the sex ratio of United 
States-born children and found ‘‘evidence of sex 
selection, most likely at the prenatal stage’’. 
The data revealed obvious ‘‘son preference’’ in 
the form of unnatural sex-ratio imbalances 
within certain segments of the United States 
population, primarily those segments tracing 
their origins to countries where sex-selection 
abortion is prevalent. The evidence strongly 
suggests that some Americans are exercising 
sex-selection abortion practices within the 
United States consistent with discriminatory 
practices common to their country of origin, or 
the country to which they trace their ancestry. 
While sex-selection abortions are more common 
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outside the United States, the evidence reveals 
that female feticide is also occurring in the 
United States. 
(G) The American public supports a prohi-
bition of sex-selection abortion. In a March 
2006 Zogby International poll, 86 percent of 
Americans agreed that sex-selection abortion 
should be illegal, yet only four States proscribe 
sex-selection abortion. In a 2012 poll conducted 
by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, 80 percent of 
Americans agreed that sex-selection abortion 
should be illegal. 
(H) Despite the failure of the United 
States to proscribe sex-selection abortion, the 
United States Congress has expressed repeat-
edly, through Congressional resolution, strong 
condemnation of policies promoting sex-selec-
tion abortion in the ‘‘Communist Government 
of China’’. Likewise, at the 2007 United Na-
tion’s Annual Meeting of the Commission on 
the Status of Women, 51st Session, the United 
States delegation spearheaded a resolution call-
ing on countries to condemn sex-selective abor-
tion, a policy directly contradictory to the per-
missiveness of current United States law, which 
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places no restriction on the practice of sex-se-
lection abortion. The United Nations Commis-
sion on the Status of Women has urged govern-
ments of all nations ‘‘to take necessary meas-
ures to prevent . . . prenatal sex selection’’. 
(I) A 1990 report by Harvard University 
economist Amartya Sen, estimated that more 
than 100 million women were ‘‘demographically 
missing’’ from the world as early as 1990 due 
to sexist practices, including sex-selection abor-
tion. Many experts believe sex-selection abortion 
is the primary cause. More recent estimates of 
women missing from the world range in the 
hundreds of millions. 
(J) Countries with longstanding experience 
with sex-selection abortion—such as the Repub-
lic of India, the United Kingdom, and the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China—have enacted restric-
tions on sex selection, and have steadily contin-
ued to strengthen prohibitions and penalties. 
The United States, by contrast, has no law in 
place to restrict sex-selection abortion, estab-
lishing the United States as affording less pro-
tection from sex-based feticide than the Repub-
lic of India or the People’s Republic of China, 
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whose recent practices of sex-selection abortion 
were vehemently and repeatedly condemned by 
United States congressional resolution and by 
the United States Ambassador to the Commis-
sion on the Status of Women. Public state-
ments from within the medical community re-
veal that citizens of other countries come to the 
United States for sex-selection procedures that 
would be criminal in their country of origin. Be-
cause the United States permits abortion on the 
basis of sex, the United States may effectively 
function as a ‘‘safe haven’’ for those who seek 
to have American physicians do what would 
otherwise be criminal in their home countries— 
a sex-selection abortion, most likely late-term. 
(K) The American medical community op-
poses sex selection. The American Congress of 
Obstetricians and Gynecologists (‘‘ACOG’’) 
stated in its 2007 Ethics Committee Opinion, 
Number 360, that sex selection is inappropriate 
because it ‘‘ultimately supports sexist prac-
tices’’. The American Society of Reproductive 
Medicine (‘‘ASRM’’) published a 2004 Ethics 
Committee Opinion, noting that central to the 
controversy of sex selection in the use of as-
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sisted reproductive technology (‘‘ART’’) is the 
potential for ‘‘inherent gender discrimination’’, 
. . . the ‘‘risk of psychological harm to sex-se-
lected offspring (i.e., by placing on them expec-
tations that are too high),’’ . . . and ‘‘rein-
forcement of gender bias in society as a whole.’’ 
Sex selection in ART remains ‘‘vulnerable to 
the judgment that no matter what its basis, 
[the method] identifies gender as a reason to 
value one person over another, and it supports 
socially constructed stereotypes of what gender 
means.’’ In doing so, it not only ‘‘reinforces 
possibilities of unfair discrimination, but may 
trivialize human reproduction by making it de-
pend on the selection of nonessential features of 
offspring.’’ The ASRM ethics opinion continues, 
‘‘ongoing problems with the status of women in 
the United States make it necessary to take ac-
count of concerns for the impact of sex-selection 
on goals of gender equality.’’ The American As-
sociation of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gyne-
cologists, an organization with hundreds of 
members—many of whom are former abortion-
ists—makes the following declaration: ‘‘Sex se-
lection abortions are more graphic examples of 
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the damage that abortion inflicts on women. In 
addition to increasing premature labor in subse-
quent pregnancies, increasing suicide and major 
depression, and increasing the risk of breast 
cancer in teens who abort their first pregnancy 
and delay childbearing, sex selection abortions 
are often targeted at fetuses simply because the 
fetus is female. As physicians who care for both 
the mother and her unborn child, the American 
Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gyne-
cologists vigorously opposes aborting fetuses be-
cause of their gender.’’ The President’s Council 
on Bioethics published a Working Paper stating 
the council’s belief that society’s respect for re-
productive freedom does not prohibit the regu-
lation or prohibition of ‘‘sex control’’, defined as 
the use of various medical technologies to 
choose the sex of one’s child. The publication 
expresses concern that ‘‘sex control might lead 
to . . . dehumanization and a new eugenics’’. 
(L)(i) Sex-selection abortions are often co-
erced, and therefore, the opposite of ‘‘choice’’. 
Researchers at the University of California at 
Berkeley and the University of California at 
San Francisco completed a study of Indian- 
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American women who had undergone sex-selec-
tion abortions in the United States. The study 
found that sex-selection abortions are often the 
product of violent coercion. 
(ii) Women who carried a female unborn 
child to term said they were subject to varying 
degrees of verbal and physical abuse, which 
may be to the point of actually inducing a sex- 
selection abortion. A woman may be denied 
food, water, and rest to induce an abortion 
where the family determines that the woman is 
carrying a female unborn child. Some women 
described being hit, pushed, choked and kicked 
in the abdomen in a husband’s attempt to forc-
ibly terminate a female unborn child. Preg-
nancy is already a vulnerable time for women; 
the most common cause of death for pregnant 
women in the United States is homicide, often 
at the hands of the unborn child’s father. 
(iii) The study concluded that sex selection 
can be the product of an abusive environment 
created by marital partners, an extended fam-
ily, or both. One-third of the women in the 
study reported that a history of family violence 
exacerbated when they did not give birth to a 
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son. Notably, because the researchers had rea-
son to fear for the participants’ exposure to 
marital violence, all subjects received informa-
tion on local South Asian women’s organiza-
tions offering assistance for victims of family vi-
olence. The failure to bear a son is a serious 
matter; the birth of a daughter could result in 
violence or a brutal death for the mother at the 
hands of the father and mother-in-law. For ex-
ample, photojournalist Walter Astrada’s re-
nowned documentary tells the story of an In-
dian woman who was tortured and abandoned 
by her husband and mother-in-law for refusing 
to abort twin girls. Sex-selection abortion has 
long been considered a form of violence against 
women, and the study proved that both the 
women and the unborn daughter are victims of 
violence where sex-selection abortion is legally 
available but not sought by the mother. Forty 
percent of the women had terminated prior 
pregnancies when they learned that the unborn 
child was female. Of the women who discovered 
they were pregnant with a girl during the inter-
view period, 89 percent underwent a sex-selec-
tion abortion. Among those that did not abort 
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their unborn daughters, 100 percent expressed 
ambivalence about prior sex-selection abortions. 
Further, 100 percent cited physical and psycho-
logical trauma from the past abortions as rea-
sons for not seeking another. Most tragically, 
100 percent expressed guilt, shame and sadness 
over their inability to ‘‘save’’ the daughters they 
had aborted. 
(iv) Coercive sex-selection abortions are 
suspected in other western countries as well. 
Following a 2012 investigation of sex-selection 
abortion in the United Kingdom, Dr. Tony Fal-
coner, President of the Royal College of Obstet-
rics and Gynaecology, raised the specter that 
women may be experiencing violence and coer-
cion to force sex-selection abortions. 
(v) A growing body of research documents 
the relationship between intimate partner vio-
lence and reproductive coercion. 
(M) Sex-selection abortion harms women. 
Researchers at the University of California 
found that women in the United States who un-
dergo sex-selection abortions are at increased 
risk for psychological and physical morbidity, 
documented by their descriptions of depression, 
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anxiety, chronic pain, physical abuse, closely 
spaced pregnancies, and ‘‘forced abortions’’. 
Further, 100 percent of the study participants 
who chose to carry unborn baby girls cited 
physical and psychological trauma from past 
abortions as reasons for not seeking another. 
Similarly, Indian-Canadian counselor, Aruna 
Papp, stated publicly that in her 30 years of ex-
perience treating Indian-Canadian women, she 
has found that sex-selection abortion is the 
leading cause of mental illness among women in 
the Punjabi Health Services, Peel region, and 
the leading cause of depression and attempted 
suicide in the South Asian Settlement Services 
in Scarborough. Some of Papp’s patients ob-
tained their sex-selection abortions in Michigan 
and New York. Papp also reports ‘‘many other 
physical ailments that are related to two, three, 
or four abortions’’. 
(N) Sex-selection abortion results in an un-
natural sex-ratio imbalance. An unnatural sex- 
ratio imbalance is undesirable, due to the in-
ability of the numerically predominant sex to 
find mates. Experts worldwide document that a 
significant sex-ratio imbalance in which males 
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numerically predominate can be a cause of in-
creased violence and militancy within a society. 
Likewise, an unnatural sex-ratio imbalance 
gives rise to the commoditization of humans in 
the form of human trafficking, and a con-
sequent increase in kidnapping and other vio-
lent crime. 
(O) Sex-selection abortions have the effect 
of diminishing the representation of women in 
the American population, and therefore, the 
American electorate. 
(P) Sex-selection abortion reinforces sex 
discrimination and has no place in a civilized 
society. 
(2) RACIAL DISCRIMINATION FINDINGS.— 
(A) Minorities are a vital part of American 
society and culture and possess the same funda-
mental human rights and civil rights as the ma-
jority. 
(B) United States law prohibits discrimi-
nation on the basis of race in various contexts, 
including 
employment, 
education, 
housing, 
health insurance coverage, and athletics. 
(C) A ‘‘race-selection abortion’’ is an abor-
tion performed for purposes of eliminating an 
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unborn child because the child or a parent of 
the child is of an undesired race. Race-selection 
abortion is barbaric, and described by civil 
rights advocates as an act of race-based vio-
lence, predicated on race discrimination. By 
definition, race-selection abortions do not impli-
cate the health of mother of the unborn, but in-
stead are elective procedures motivated by race 
bias. 
(D) A thorough review of the history of the 
American population control movement and its 
close affiliation with the American Eugenics So-
ciety reveals a history of targeting certain racial 
or ethnic groups for ‘‘family planning’’. This 
history likely contributes to the current statistic 
that a Black baby is five times as likely to be 
aborted as a White baby, often in a federally 
subsidized clinic. 
(E) Abortion is the leading cause of death 
in the Black community. With approximately 
450,000 Black abortions per year, more Black 
Americans lose their lives each year to abortion 
than to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, AIDS, 
and violence combined. These statistics are de-
rived by comparing the abortion statistics of the 
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