Candace

Talmadge

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July 28, 2008

Anti-Abortion Nonsense Disguises Movement’s Retro Goals

Is there no end to the nonsense spouted by anti-abortion zealots?

One of the latest salvos comes from a group blaming the Asian practice of sex-selective abortions on U.S. feminists because, according to this pretzel logic, this nation’s feminist community is “so wedded to abortion on demand” that its members fail to speak out against the practice.

On its web site, this very same anti-abortion organization brags about having “eliminated $790 million in U.S. tax dollars to population control groups or programs.”

In other words, these abortion-ban crusaders have helped block U.S. funding for responsible family planning that would have eliminated the need for many of those abortions that they then blame on American feminists.

Lord a mercy! Such gobbledygook masquerading as reasoned thought makes the brain ache.

Many Asian countries tragically do practice sex-selective abortions because these societies favor boys for cultural reasons dating back thousands of years. Before the advent of ultrasound, couples had to wait until birth to know the child’s sex. What happened next was just as tragic as sex-selective abortion, if not more so. Unwanted female babies were simply thrown away or abandoned in the widespread practice of infanticide. (Or they were sold into slavery/future sexual bondage.)

Guess what? If this anti-abortion group manages to end all sex-selective abortions throughout Asia, infanticide would simply resume, even if conducted in a more covert manner than in the past. Sex trafficking in unwanted female children might also rise.

If we want to end sex-selective abortion, we have to change hearts and minds in all societies – Eastern and Western – about women and their place in society. Ironically, those who practice sex-selective abortions in Asia have a lot in common with those who would ban all access to abortion in this country. Both sides are simply the opposite extremes of the identical mindset that devalues females and seeks to limit their roles to breeding, child care and housekeeping.

Those who truly reject abortion don’t merely decry abortions based on gender. They also welcome responsible family planning as the means to cut the rate of abortions by reducing the numbers of unwanted pregnancies. Yet all too often, abortion opponents lobby against access to contraceptives and try to cut funding for programs like Head Start, subsidized school lunches and daycare programs that would make a positive difference in the lives of unwanted children after birth.

How telling. What it reveals is an anti-abortion movement that is not so much about saving babies, but about forcing women in this country to return to their “proper” roles as defined by the movement – housewives and mothers economically dependent on men and no longer in control of their own fertility.

The movement’s members can’t say this in so many words, however, so they wrap their retro agenda in rhetoric about the unborn and, of late, “concern” for the effects of abortion on women. They cannot be explicit about their true social goals because their views are no longer the U.S. mainstream, and they are well aware of it. Poll after poll shows a majority of Americans want to keep abortion legal, with some restrictions, and even larger majorities favor contraception. While highly vocal and, at times, vicious, the U.S. anti-abortion movement is a relic of the past. 

And the population situation in China may cause other Asian countries to rethink their views on the value of females. Having instituted a draconian policy of only one child per couple several decades ago, the Chinese government now finds that there is a growing gender imbalance in that country. The social impact of this imbalance has yet to play out, and it most likely will not be positive. But if females really do become scarce in one nation or region of the world, perhaps their true worth will be hard to ignore any longer.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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