The Inexplicable 30%: A Postscript

Postscript to "And what if their baby could choose?"

The newspaper that carried that report conducted a poll whose results as of this morning were depressing: 47% favoured sex selection, 47% opposed it and 6% could not decide. By the time the poll closed, this had, happily changed, although not enough: 70% oppose, 25% favour, and 4% cannot decide.

What accounts for this 30%? So much in a poll depends on phrasing. What if the question posed was: is it right to abort a foetus because it is female? Would it have been so hard for the 4% to decide?

So much in a lawsuit depends on the frame of the argument. What is truly disturbing about this is its choice of a right to freedom of choice frame. It subverts the liberal opposition to any modification of the pre-conception and Pre-natal diagnostic tests (prohibition of sex selection) Act by using its language to further a very fundamental discriminatory attitude built into our society. It obfuscates what is to most of us a very obvious choice. And it raises secondary issues about the conditions in which the decision to abort (or in the mirror image way the issue is framed in the US, the right to choose to abort) is acceptable if this is not.

The campaign against female infanticide and foeticide has been waged with varying success across several planes--the legal, the moral, the intellectual and the political. A sampler of this campaign is available here.

And what if their baby could choose?

Mayura Janwalkar, Couple wants to determine sex of unborn third child, wants only a son, Daily News and Analysis, February 27, 2007.

This couple have two daughters and want only a son now. They are suing for the right to choose the sex of their third child. Anger is my first response, so I am going with my second and third in this post.

What are the limits to freedom? This classic question manages to take an ugly twist whenever it comes to women: the right to determine the sex of your baby, the right to mutilate bodies in the name of culture, the right to protect girls through depriving them of education and so on.

The limits to freedom lie somewhere in one question that springs to mind when I read this: what if their baby is witness to this and decides, male or female, I don't like these parents, let's get rid of them?

One feels deeply for the plight of daughters (their older one is old enough to understand what is going on) who witness this.