Beyond The Sex Selective Abortion Debate

This morning I came across a pro life article which asked an interesting question: "Where are the feminists in the sex selection debate?" The full article can be read here: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=13367. Don't expect rocket science because it's a CNA article. However, it does ask a pertinent question. So I took myself to Google to see where the feminists are on this issue.

The reality is that feminists in the orient, India, and South East Asia have been very vocal on this issue and have been responsible for making sex selective abortions illegal in India and China.

They have done it because they see both the misogyny behind it, and the ramifications it's practice has had on their respective cultures. They've also found out something else. Making it illegal doesn't stop it. It seems in cultures in which the pressure is on to have sons, the pressure is on to have sons. India is also impacted by the dowry structure, and it's ultimately much more expensive to have girls than boys. It's a culture thing. Why roll this particular die if you don't have to.

In the West and the North, sex selective abortion is juxtaposed against to right to obtain a legal abortion. This has been a dilemma for a lot of feminists who are sickened by the whole notion of sex selective abortion, but also see that making it illegal is a doorway to eliminating current abortion laws. It seems in the West both the pro choice and pro life camps are prone to the slippery slope argument.

However, another reason feminists may be keeping a low profile on this argument is that if there is sex selection going on in Western countries, it's appearance is showing up in a preference for girls. Kind of hard to make the misogyny claim when that argument may actually be under cut by real life birth statistics. It's also true that in the Indian and Asian immigrant populations the same preference for males is being enacted in the West. A trend which is expected to decline as these populations assimilate.

In the West though, there is another technology beginning to put more emphasis on this issue and that's the new procedures used in reproductive technology which are aimed at determining the sex BEFORE conception. Sex is determined by separating male sperm from female sperm in then implanting the chosen preferential sperm. Abortion is not an issue, but sex selection in it's most basic form is the issue. Except it's not the only issue. In pre conceptual genetic tinkering we have the potential to do a lot of things. Here's an extract from an article in a publication of the Council For Responsible Genetics:

"When Mary Anne Warren considered sex selection in 1985, she summarily dismissed concerns of its contribution to a new eugenics as “implausible” on the grounds that “[t]here is at present no highly powerful interest group which is committed to the development and use of immoral forms of human genetic engineering.”(5)

However, less than two decades later, a disturbing number of highly powerful figures are in fact committed to the development and use of a form of human genetic engineering that huge majorities here and abroad consider immoral — inheritable genetic modification, or manipulating the genes passed on to our children. These scientists, bioethicists, biotech entrepreneurs, and libertarians are actively advocating a new market-based, high-tech eugenics.

Princeton University molecular biologist Lee Silver, for example, positively anticipates the emergence of genetic castes and human sub-species. “[T]he GenRich class and the Natural class will become . . . entirely separate species,” he writes, “with no ability to cross-breed, and with as much romantic interest in each other as a current human would have for a chimpanzee.”(6) Nobel laureate James Watson promotes redesigning the genes of our children with statements such as, “People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great.” {I couldn't help but notice, James Watson didn't write 'make all girls smart'.}

None of this is happening in humans at this point, but it is in lab animals. The above technology requires actual manipulation of genetic material. What we do have is pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). This is a routine scanning of pre-implanted embryos for known genetically based diseases and deformities. Lately it's been used to screen for sex, for late adult onset diseases, and for tissue matching for siblings who require specific genetics for transplant purposes. Practitioners of PGD are arguing for even wider useage. "Bioethicist Edgar Dahl recently published an essay arguing that if a “safe and reliable genetic test” for sexual orientation were to become available, “parents should clearly be allowed” to use it, as long as they are permitted to select for homosexual as well as heterosexual children." I'm sure heterosexual parents are going to be lining up to select their children for homosexuality.

In essence PGD is about SOCIAL selection, not just specifically social sex selection. As it currently stands the professional group The American Society for Reproductive Medicine does not endorse PGD for routine sex selection. It must be stated though, that in 2001 the president of their Ethics Committee, unilaterally encouraged repeal of this statute. After women's groups and NGO's vociferously protested the change, the ASRM reaffirmed it's policy against social sex selection. Given there are bio-tech companies with so much capital invested in the field though, it's just a matter of time before they try to reopen the door.

As of now, PGD is a form of conception which is principally available for the wealthy, a form of social selection in itself. The fact PGD avoids the whole abortion issue is in it's favor as far as corporate concerns go. The fact that sex can be determined before conception via manipulation of the sperm, places this choice beyond the moral arguments surrounding conception.

So where are the feminists in this brave new world? Rethinking the absoluteness of libertarian concepts of choice. As author Margaret Talbot writes: "If we allow people to select a child’s sex, then there really is no barrier to picking embryos — or, ultimately, genetically programming children — based on any whim, any faddish notion of what constitutes superior stock. . . . A world in which people (wealthy people, anyway) can custom-design human beings unhampered by law or social sanction is not a dystopian sci-fi fantasy any longer but a realistic scenario. It is not a world most of us would want to live in."

If most of us truly do not want to live in a world in which embryos can be custom designed, it maybe time opposing sides recognize at least this common interest. It would seem to me that the common good and social justice would demand this. We need to get beyond the abortion issue before it becomes the distraction that lets the James Watson's, Lee Silver's and the Edgar Dahl's of the scientific community foist their ideas of a Brave New World on those otherwise occupied on the issues of the last century.

The full article from the Council For Responsible Genetics can be accessed here: http://www.gene-watch.org/genewatch/articles/17-1darnovsky.html