I’m firmly pro-choice but...

[Banana8080]

....I’m not ok with gender selection abortion ie girls.

But if I’m pro-choice then I shouldn’t be interested in motives at all... argh! I don’t know how to reconcile this with myself.

Labour announced today they’d stop early gender blood tests which prompted this post.

The thing about sex selective abortion is that in cultures where this is prevalent it is not that people "don't want daughters" but that they want to have at least one surviving son (for inheritance reasons, and seen as looking after parents in old age).

If you have 50% chance of having a boy with each pregnancy that means that 25% of women will not have a boy after two children, 13% after 3 children, 6% after 4 children and so on, so not having a means of selection means they have to keep trying with a toll on their bodies, and their family's prosperity, and producing daughters they don't want as a side effect of the quest for a son.

I think if there was a reliable of ensuring you conceive a son or daughter in this situation (say by selecting only Y carrying sperm for example) we would probably think that was OK (better than forcing women to keep having more children), and if we are pro-choice then we shouldn't view abortion differently.

Of course ideally there would not be son preference, but given that there is allowing sex selective abortion seems to me better than outlawing it.

Saw a picture of Corbyn today gurning next to a placard saying 'all menstrual products should be free' and thought something very similar.

How stupid do they think we are?

Obviously very as they don't even recognise we exist judging by their policies and behaviour - only as handmaidens to the masters;) Tampon tax and free menstrual products are sops to the masses unfortunately - The guys will of course be demanding and be awarded tax cuts as parity whilst we are fighting the policy reversal....

Plus what about women who are post menopause? (couldn't resist that whataboutery).

McDonnell is on webchat tomorrow so I suppose a good starter for ten is what is their definition of woman? Plus why are they eroding women's rights and putting them and children in harms' way? Do they not want women's votes and if so, where is the policy to attract them? They have a lot of policy directed at 0.6% of the population - do they not consider the 52% of interest? (Do the maths Labour). And what will they do about women disadvantaged by previous Labour and Tory austerity policies?......

Anyway didn't mean to derail - tl;dr I am not taking Labour's recent announcement seriously - it's just a sound bite imo

Do you really need to agree with every woman's reason for having an abortion?

I agree that it's horrible that women feel they need to abort female fetuses, but stopping them from doing so is simply punishing them for the society they live in. Don't you think they have been punished enough for that?

The idea that we can solve patriarchal problems by limiting women's autonomy is misogyny in action.

Do you really need to agree with every woman's reason for having an abortion?

No. Not if free choice is to be truly free. However, I do have concerns about women being coerced or even forced by abusive partners, I’d like to see some kind of safety net for them.

Its still either ‘pro choice or no choice’. Systematic sexism needs a collective effort to dismantle. Till that’s done (if ever) individual women must be able to end their pregnancies legally and safely, funded by the state and as early as possible and as late as necessary.
Labour can stay out of it. I don’t see them working to combat sexism in any way at the moment.

Ye No choice is truly free though, we are all influenced by our society/culture.

Regardless, if a man is forcing his wife to have an abortion, stopping her from having that abortion is not going to help her escape the abuse. In fact it will probably increase the abuse and make leaving a far harder prospect for her.

Providing better support and a better safety net for women fleeing abusive husbands and countering the culture that says that female children are worthless would do a lot more to improve the lives of women in these situations.

However, I do have concerns about women being coerced or even forced by abusive partners, I’d like to see some kind of safety net for them.

How is that going to happen? Have you any suggestions?

Abortion purely for sex selection is illegal in the U.K. it’s not about choice, it’s about the law. Early sex identification and termination of say a boy where there was a history of DMD or Tay Sachs is lawful. That said abortion providers don’t really turn people away and nobody would know if it was a sex based top.

Have you any suggestions?

I wish I did. Beyond asking at the appointment, no.

From a societal standpoint I understand why India banned screening for sex. An overhang in young males is very bad news for any society, it is more prone to war, civil war, rape, violence, instability.
And obviously it is mysoginist.

However, the reasons why women feel the need to abort females do not vanish, just because there is a ban.

So on balance I would not want to take the choice from women. It is a cheap copout that absolves society from changing society to make female children economically tenable.

It is abhorrent to skew sex ratios.

At the same time, I support the right of the woman above all rights of the foetus, full stop.

The problem is that once you start to restrict abortion you’re on slippery ground because it implies foetal rights.

Every child should be wanted. No woman should be made to carry a pregnancy she doesn’t want to. I feel this even more strongly than I ever did having had two VERY much wanted but physically awful pregnancies.

It would be unworkable anyway - what it would mean is that nipt on the nhs would be restricted. Private testing would be impossible to regulate - you’re talking about a single blood sample, that could be shipped to any country with facilities. To enforce it you’d effectively need to make finding the sexual of the baby illegal. That would mean regulating ultrasound clinics, etc.

And as we see from India, it wouldn’t solve problem.

Incidentally I had ds1 in Sweden. The sonographer at both scans point blank refused to tell us the sex because of this.

The moment you decide a woman's rights are forfeit because you think it will create a better society for women's rights, you have lost your way, and badly.
I know the thread had moved on a bit but I just wanted to respond specifically to this comment as it has been playing on my mind. I fundamentally disagree with the theory that any deprivation of women's rights is regressive or bad as it assumes that the rights granted to women are in women's best interests and able to be exercised freely. For example if there was a law that allowed women to elect for type 3 genital mutilation would you support this? Following your logic it should be allowed if you support a woman having complete autonomy over their bodies and are happy to disregard the dodgy cultural context laced with misogyny in which they make their decisions. I personally am happy that the practice has been banned in the UK and feel that depriving women of their right to have FGM does move us closer to creating a better society for women. I do honestly wonder if there are any proponents of legalising FGM on this thread as reading the arguments put forward it would make sense that there should be.

I also think that you are speaking about women as individuals and not about women as a class. As a class I think we have the right to be born and I believe it is our right to be represented in the population roughly as nature would intend. There is a reason why there is a saying about having 'strength in numbers" and think that any state sponsored abortion of females will make women in the affected communities be not only repressed but repressed minorities. Let me ask you, if this technology had existed a few centuries ago in Britain do you think that women would have made the progress towards equality that we have? I'm sure there was severe pressure on women in the past to produce a male heir but ultimately their lack of ability to select the sex of their offspring meant many women were born that were ultimately the catalyst for change. If they had the ability to choose and opted overwhemingly for males then I don't believe for a second that feminism would have gained momentum.

I actually really appreciate that you are thinking so deeply about this bumpity, and I'm glad of the challenge to my thoughts.

Here is where I land on the FGM example you raise.
There is a patient, and a doctor who is duty bound to act in her best interests, and to do her no harm. There are two parties involved.
Who is the patient? The woman.
If she were to harm herself with FGM, would I criminalise her? No. She has autonomy over her own body. She should have.
If a doctor however acts upon her body to do her harm - he or she should be criminalised. This is harming another person, breaking the Hippocratic Oath, and breaking the law. A woman cannot give consent for a doctor to harm her, just as she cannot consent to be murdered, because no murderer can claim or use that 'consent'.

I feel the same way about prostitution, and the sale of organs. A woman might wish to consent to having sex with a stranger, and she is free too, her bodily autonomy is sacrosanct.
But the man cannot purchase her consent, as HE in doing so commits a crime. Purchasing access to a woman's body renders consent void - if it is bought then it is coerced, and it is not consent.

In both scenarios the woman's bodily autonomy is not affected. It is the other party that commits the crime by purchasing or harming another human.

In the abortion scenario the procedure itself is the choice of the woman, and is in the best interests of health of the woman. The doctor can facilitate this procedure knowing it is her wish and will be significantly less harmful or risky than full term pregnancy and birth, and certainly than self inflicted abortion.

This proposed law would potentially criminalise a doctor and her patient for the open exchange of factual medical information about the pregnancy, and it would legally compel a woman to proceed with a pregnancy against her wishes and at risk of the detriment of her health.
It places her value to society in producing female babies above her bodily autonomy. It's forced birth.

@BarrackerBarmer
Thanks for your response and the clarification of your views however I'm still not sure I can fully reconcile you supporting frustrating women's ability to exercise their rights over their bodies with regards to FGM and prostitution but be so opposed to the outlawing of sex selective abortion.

I agree with you that the banning of FGM correctly criminalises the Doctor who will have broken to Hippocratic Oath by performing such a procedure but I'm not sure that the concept of "harm" is as black and white as you imply. Cosmetic surgery can often by harmful to a patient's health and is usually not strictly medically necessary but yet I think most people would say that someone electing for breast augmentation has the right to make that choice and have that choice acted upon. You could argue the severity of some FGM and the health consequences is why it is outlawed but I do think that it is also a political statement about protecting vulnerable women from harmful cultural practices that we as a country don't endorse.

Also the routine abortion of female fetuses is harmful to the women getting the abortions as the practice of getting pregnant and then aborting potentially multiple times could well take a toll on a woman's body. I know you would argue that this would take significantly less of a toll than if the woman was forced to carry the unwanted baby to term and then give birth but that just means we accept one evil to avoid a greater evil. I think this is a slippery slope that could also be applied to the other examples of FGM and prostitution. If we outlaw prostitution then won't women put themselves in riskier more harmful situations in order to get money? If we don't allow trained doctors to perform FGM in sterile, safe environments aren't we risking backstreet FGM which could have even more dire consequences for the women involved? You could use this form of logic to justify a whole host of activities and I find that quite scary.

I'm very strongly pro-choice.

I also often wonder what sort of life an unwanted girl would have, and her mother who "failed" to provide a son.

A friend of mine was in hospital with a woman who had had a daughter, and refused to hold her or feed her. When her family came to the hospital, her mother in law battered her about the head. Social Services and police were called when she tried to leave without her baby. What sort of hellish existence is that? And this was in a health authority where you are not allowed to know the sex of the baby. I often wonder what became of them.

A friend of mine was in hospital with a woman who had had a daughter, and refused to hold her or feed her. When her family came to the hospital, her mother in law battered her about the head. Social Services and police were called when she tried to leave without her baby. What sort of hellish existence is that?

This ^^ is exactly what I mean about forcing a woman to have a child that she does not want to have.

It's not a good outcome for anyone. Why would anyone argue otherwise?

@TheDowagerCuntess
Do you think if this technology had been invented centuries ago and sex selective abortions had been available in the UK that we would be where we are now in terms of feminism and equal rights? Realistically it is possible that a lot of the early activists/suffragettes etc wouldn't have been born at all...

Well, on the flip side, in Western / developed countries, girls seem to be the more wanted of the two sexes (you see it on here all the time, in terms of 'gender' (sex) disappointment, and women admitting anonymously that they want girls).

At least, they're preferred by women, and they're the ones with control over their own reproductive rights.

You're right that - arguably - more girl foetuses may have been aborted in past times, but it's purely a philosophical question, since the technology wasn't there.

And I still don't think any woman should be forced to carry on with a pregnancy she doesn't want.

@TheDowagerCuntess
Yes there does anecdotally seem to a slight preference for girls on MN although I think some studies have proven a preference for boys in countries such as America so if there is a preference it's definitely weaker and would be unlikely to motivate women to have multiple sex selective abortions.

I don't think it's just a philosophical question that's pertinent to the past but one that is relevant to how progress towards equality can realistically be achieved in paternalistic cultures today. Filtering females out at birth has serious and far reaching consequences for women's rights and what may be most palatable right now could be setting back equality for many years leaving further generations of women with no choice but to abort female fetuses or be stigmatised by their community.

you supporting frustrating women's ability to exercise their rights over their bodies with regards to FGM and prostitution

Hmmm.That's either a deliberate misrepresentation of what I said or a misunderstanding.

I DON'T support the "frustration of women's ability to exercise their rights over their bodies with regards to FGM and prostitution".

I already made that point.

Bodily autonomy is being able to do what one wants with one's own body. So if a woman self harms - this should not be a criminal offence. We can each harm ourselves. We cannot legally harm others. Even if they ask us to.

If she has consensual sex with another adult, this should not be a criminal offence.

In no way would I legally frustrate her autonomy to use her body as she wishes.

What I WOULD outlaw is the principle that a person can BUY RIGHTS over another person's body, or DO HARM to another person with impunity.

Doctors have to balance relative harms.
The harm from the prick of an injection is weighed against the harm from not having it. If a stranger in the street jabbed me with a needle, it is assault. If I consent to a doctor injecting me, the law allows it. My consent is part of that, and the balance of relative harms is the other.
If there was no benefit to the injection, and only potential harm, then the doctor still would not be able to go ahead. Consent is not enough on its own. A doctor still has a duty to 'do no harm'.

So it goes with FGM.
I can harm myself, but a doctor may not harm me.

Wait a minute.

Are we actually sure women in Britain are having the nipt to discover the sex of the foetus with a view to terminating if it is female?

Because that doesn't chime with data in our region where the issue is that the vast number of women from minority communities refuse diagnostic tests at 12 weeks, never mind consider paying for the nipt, which is around £300 and pretty expensive for most people.

Indeed, midwives told me that pretty much the only people opting into the nuchal fold and bloods at 12 weeks were women of English and West Indian heritage. At one major regional hospital, over 60 percent of women refuse diagnostics at 12 weeks.

So if you are going to refuse tests for development disorders, I can't really see you testing for sex with a view to terminate.

I'd really like to see some hard data on this.

A great point PackingSoap and another reason to be very cynical about the motivations for restricting women's access to their own medical record and removing bodily autonomy.
This time last year it was about removing women's autonomy over Downs syndrome.
This year it is sex selection. The tool for both is - remove women's information, remove women's choice, remove women's autonomy.
If this fails there will be another attempt to achieve the same aim.
The underlying motivation will be the same. Women must not be allowed unconditional bodily autonomy.
Once you shoehorn one condition into women's sovereignty over their own bodies it is much easier to add some more using the same principle.
It's important to keep ones eye on the ball.

@BarrackerBarmer
Apologies if you feel it was a misrepresentation, that was my genuine interpretation of what you were saying.

My understanding is:

You think women should have full autonomy over their bodies and therefore should be able to use their bodies as they wish. Ok, I get that principle and understand why you wouldn't criminalise women who choose to have consensual sex or self mutilate on that basis.

However it's when you write the following that I begin to get confused
What I WOULD outlaw is the principle that a person can BUY RIGHTS over another person's body, or DO HARM to another person with impunity.
The second part of this statement in particular is hugely subjective and complex as is the concept of balancing harms. A woman could come to a doctor requesting FGM stating that if he didn't agree to perform the surgery then she would be ostracised from her community, suffer extreme mental anguish and distress and therefore be forced to turn to a backstreet practicioner that didn't have the appropriate facilities to safely carry out such a procedure. Would the doctor really be breaking the Hippocratic Oath if he carried out this surgery if it wasn't already banned? What is the material difference between FGM and sex selective abortions? Both are harmful procedures for women that are only desired due to patriarchal cultural norms.

I would argue that any legal abortion for a woman presents less risk than a full term pregnancy and birth.

It is always the path of least harm, which is why it should always be an option for women. Choosing to continue a pregnancy to term and give birth will always be more dangerous, and so should only ever be chosen by a woman with her full consent. And of course, millions of us still freely choose to do this, and probably this will not change!

Every woman risks her life in childbirth, even if that risk is smaller in some countries than others. Certainly the physical harm caused by birth injuries is something many women don't escape even in the UK.

My belief is that a woman that chooses not to proceed with a pregnancy and to forgo those risks can be fully supported by her doctor in the factual knowledge that terminating the pregnancy poses less medical risk than continuing it.