Abortion and gender selection

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The question: Should a woman's choice extend to aborting a female foetus?

"A woman's right to choose" and "Every child a wanted child" are common, and often useful, concepts. But the situation in India, where the number of baby girls has dropped significantly because of selective abortion of female foetuses, illustrates how tricky the questions raised can be.

Those of us in favour of choice tend to believe that, if a pregnant woman is considering an abortion, the decision should ultimately be hers. There may be complex factors involved – and her partner and wider society have a legitimate interest – but forcing her to carry a foetus she does not want (or to have a backstreet abortion) would cause more problems than it solves.

Being pro-choice is different from being pro-abortion: it is also about respecting a woman's freedom, once she has conceived, to have the baby if she wants. Nobody – family, community or state – has the right to coerce her into having an abortion.

Likewise, access to knowledge and affordable contraception, and protection from rape, reduce the chances of unintended pregnancy.

But identifying when choice is being exercised freely is not always straightforward.

A recent article in the Lancet highlighted the fact that sex-selective abortion is increasingly common in India. The 2011 census showed that there were about 7.1 million fewer girls than boys aged up to six years, mainly because of the abortion of female foetuses. A law was passed in 1996 to prevent the misuse of prenatal tests for this purpose, but it has had limited effect.

Neglect and infanticide also sometimes claim baby girls' lives.

Pressing though the problems of poverty and lack of education are for many Indian women, sex-selective abortion is not simply a concern affecting those who are illiterate and impoverished. The imbalance is greatest among better-educated and comfortably off households, in part because they can more easily afford testing.

This is linked with cultural preferences for boys, and household patterns in which many couples live with the groom's family, so that a girl is more likely to care for her in-laws than her own parents when they grow old. But probably the greatest factor is the dowry system . Dowries were banned by law in India in 1961, but continue to be given, and demanded, illegally.

There is huge pressure on families to ensure that their daughters are married, whatever the cost. Again, the law has proved ineffective in stopping this, and increasing consumerism may have led to even more extravagant demands. Even if a marriage is agreed, if the dowry is not regarded as sufficient, a young bride may face verbal abuse, physical cruelty or death at the hands of her husband or his relatives.

Commenting on the Punjab, where selective abortion is all too common, legal scholar Mallika Kaur Sarkaria pointed out: "When the choice is between abuse and honour, ridicule and prestige, vulnerability and security, women will choose honour, prestige and security – and Punjabi women will have sons." But "When multiple choices are placed on the table – the choice to raise a daughter without a dowry; the choice to have a daughter to support her in old age without ridicule; the choice to have a daughter to carry forth the family name without shame; the choice to raise a daughter without fear that violence will be inflicted on her – the same Punjabi woman might not choose to abort her female foetus".

In India and throughout the world, supporting choice means not only defending women's right to safe abortions if they so choose. It also involves tackling the social and economic factors that may get in the way of women choosing to have babies, including bias about gender or disability, and consumerist pressures.

This includes supporting those who are working within their own communities for greater equality and human rights. No woman should be pressed into having an abortion because she fears that violence, destitution or public disgrace will otherwise be inflicted on her and her family.

From the results of the 1994 National Fertility and Family Health Survey...among the women who have experienced the sex-selective test...94.6% of male fetuses were live births, but only 81.1% of female fetuses were live births. 17.4% of female fetuses were terminated by induced abortion.

to me this has less to do with abortion and more to do with their general mentality towards genders.

Except it doesn't.

I think that, in the old days, in some parts of the world, it would be fairly common to leave a new-born female infant to die, if a male was desired.

Still, there is going to be something of an imbalance, with men outnumbering women.

So, a good question for the people who are pro-Choice:

Should a choice be made based upon the gender of the fetus, or possibly whether the fetus shows signs of disability?

Or, should the choice be simply "Yes/No", I will or will not bring the baby to term, regardless of the baby's gender or possible handicap?