Do people have a right to sex-selective abortion?

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With respect, I think that is an unsustainable analogy. In the employer-employee case, it is the subject of the decision whose rights are being protected, whereas in the case of abortion, it is the right of the decision maker that is being protected. Two very different circumstances.

As for your earlier comment,



Why should we be taking any comfort here? I think I have been quite consistent in saying that while I personally dislike abortion, I will fully and unreservedly support the right of any woman to terminate her pregnancy for any reason, provided that the fetus has not passed the threshold of viability.

I don't take comfort in this. But I recognize it as the necessary and unavoidable result of a legal recognition of a right to life, liberty and security of the person.

I don't support other people exercising their rights because it accomplishes something I desire. I support other people exercising their rights because this is inherently good, in and of itself. I don't have to like it. I don't have to agree with it. I just have to recognize that this is a facet of the compromise that we all make to live in a pluralistic society that respects the Rule of Law.

Never did anything of that. Done making stupid arguments?

Not really because you missed the division in the questions. Abortion is a right to chose when you have a child, it does not follow that this right extends to a supreme monopoly to determine what sort of child you will have. The analogy to firing someone is apt because it illustrates how rights can be logically by looking at what they extend to cover. A right to fire is not a right to discriminate. Further, they would not be different circumstances if the analogy holds and we were to accept that a right to fire someone extends carte blanche through everything. The fact that you can recognise quite easily how it does not do so shows that you can place cognitive limitations on a right. A woman could still have a right to say when she is having a child and not be free to say that only blonde haired blue eyed babies will be born and they will all be men. The right need not necessarily extend to everything as it can still accomplish its primary function without the additional claim.



Of course you don't like it, it leads to you accepting a rather brutal and unpopular position... What I am trying to do, is reason, within your own worldview to show you that you need not accept such a fatalistic scenario.

91, do you support the right of a woman to terminate the pregnancy if the fetus is anencephalic? What if the fetus has Down's syndrome? What if the fetus is going to be born blind, or deaf, or paralyzed, or missing arms or legs? Do the parents get to discriminate to that degree, based on the misery of the life that the child would lead, and the amount of extra care it will require, and the financial costs of raising it?

My own views are not that important here since we have moved well beyond them at this point. I am trying to reason a line where a mother can decide when to have a child but not what sort of child she will get. I can't see any reason why parents should not just live with the consequences of their decision to have a child and go from there. If you are not prepared to raise a sick child then you probably are not the sort to be raising a well one. If partners commit to one another in sickness and in health it makes sense they should make the same commitment to their entire family. If they cannot afford the risk of a sick child then they should opt not to have one.

However reasoning from within the paradigm that accepts a level of choice, I can see good reason for drawing a line at when and taking what off of the table. Discrimination is not acceptable, treating the unborn as unborn is itself consistent but treating each unborn differently because of disability, race and gender is overreach and sustains very nasty stereotypes about disabled people being burdens and girls being worthless. Take this prose from the British Disability Rights Commission:

"In common with a wide range of disability and other organisations, the DRC believes the context in which parents choose whether to have a child should be one in which disability and non-disability are valued equally."

What is important here is digest the reality that the pro-choice position in this discussion has two components to it. The first is a claim to have a universal right to decide when a child should be born. The second is an additional claim that there is a universal right to decide what sort of child is born. I see no reason to equate the two. Efforts to conflate the two claims into one obfuscate the issue and create an avenue for an absolute right to engage in positively disgusting discrimination. As such it is both practically useful and logically evident that one can be pro-choice as to first claim and anti-discrimination with regards to the second.

'what sort of child' includes 'anencephalic type child' vs. 'non-anencephalic type child.' It includes 'Down-syndrome child' vs. 'Non-Down-syndrome child.' It includes 'Deaf child' vs. 'hearing child.' If you don't allow parents to choose what sort of child they're going to have, you're going to force a lot of women to carry to term a lot of children doomed to suffer (Cystic fibrosis), doomed to be dependent on their parents for the entirety of their parents' lives and beyond (Down syndrome), doomed to not even have the ability to experience their own humanity (anencephaly).

Well it is pretty obvious at this point that you see the two as claims as justified if not inseparable. Will you at least acknowledge that someone could be pro-choice and still separate the two claims out, even if you yourself would hold them to be valid, each on its own merit? You are being far too ideological here, it is clear what your position is and why you hold to it but you could at least attempt to reason outside of it as I am doing.

Further, I reject the language inherent in your post. Children who are disabled are not 'doomed' not are they are a 'burden'. Whenever I discuss abortion with pro-lifers my patience for such language reaches its end eventually. Sometimes I think the best argument for being pro-life is the positions put forward by the pro-abortion chaps.

Sure. I disagree, but I don't own the term 'pro-choice.'

*snort*
right back atcha, 91.

Yeah, they are. Children in general are a burden. Every additional child a parent has means less resources in terms of time, money, and energy for themselves and for their other children; disabled children, more so. The rewards might outweigh the burdens, but don't pretend that the burden isn't there. Hell, even my niece is a little bit of a burden to me; I love her dearly, and I spend money on her that I don't spend elsewhere. I think about her daily, and since she was born I constantly fear for her safety just a little bit, to the degree that I'm a tiny bit nervous whenever I know she's even in a car. Part of my fear is for my brother, her father, because it would destroy him if anything were to happen to her. Children in general are doomed, even if they're not disabled. She's doomed to lose her parents and her aunts someday, and she's doomed to die; she's doomed to suffer and to experience heart-wrenching anguish, as well as light-hearted flights of ecstatic joy. Children who are disabled are greater burdens because they need more care, and children who are disabled are doomed to more pain and more suffering.

Again, right back atcha. You are not being the paragon of reason here that you think you are.

One thing to keep in mind: why does a woman choose abortion? In most cases, it is a private decision and we simply don't know the reasons for it. Most doctors will not ask neither. So regardless what motivation, in most cases we will never know the motivation and reason for aborting. So to argue whether it is right to abort in which case, would make sense only if the woman has to justify her request. In many cases she won't be asked for a reason, which I think makes sense as it's often a very painful and hard decision she prefers not to talk about to strangers.

No--really. It is not the "right to make a decision" that is being protected here. It is the right to life, liberty and security of the person, and that right resides with the woman, because her unborn child does not have legal rights that have crystalised. Meanwhile, in the limitations on an employers right to terminate employment, it is the employee's right to be free from illegal discrimination in employment matters that is being protected.

You can't just say that one type of decision making is like another, because you have to inquire into what right is being protected when a decision maker's authority is being constrained.



You presume to much. You have no basis to know why I dislike abortion. I see nothing brutal in a therapeutic abortion; and I care not one whit for popularity.

With respect, you have shown me nothing. You have yet to present me with anything like a cogent argument about why I should accept any limitation being imposed upon a pregnant woman's right to security of her person. Because I believe that the respect for this right is inherently good, in and of itself, you have a high bar to reach to demonstrate a justifiable limitation upon it.

sex-selective? what does that mean? apart from the fact you wouldn't know too early on what it is you could have an abortion. At first I thought the title said state selective, now that's a different matter, but you still would have to pay for your scan these days and I can't think of any women who would deny their right to have a termination as long as it keeps within the legal limits of an abortion; your not going to be saving any money. It's down to the woman to end her suffering, end of.

Pregnant woman's body ... pregnant woman's choice. No need for input from anyone else.