Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

babylonsister

(170,955 posts)
Thu May 31, 2012, 07:37 AM May 2012

The Right’s ‘Gendercide’ Crusade to Limit Women’s Autonomy

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/31/the-right-s-gendercide-crusade-to-limit-women-s-autonomy.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thedailybeast%2Fpolitics+%28The+Daily+Beast+-+Politics%29

The Right’s ‘Gendercide’ Crusade to Limit Women’s Autonomy
by Michelle Goldberg May 31, 2012 4:45 AM EDT
Sex-selective abortion is a problem worldwide, but not in our country. So why are House lawmakers seeking to ban it? Michelle Goldberg on the anti-abortion movement’s ‘gendercide’ push and its scary implications for choice.



It’s not surprising that anti-abortion activists see sex-selective abortion as their trump card. The issue puts feminists in a particularly difficult spot, turning reproductive choice into a tool of misogyny. Reporting on sex-selective abortion in India, where feminists campaign against kanya bhronn hatya—literally, “the killing of young girls”—and patriarchs angrily assert their right to plan their families, I sometimes felt like I’d stepped through a looking glass. Clearly, the American anti-abortion movement would be happy to frame the debate in similar terms.

snip//

None of this, however, applies to the United States. There is some evidence of sex selection among Asian immigrants in this country, though it’s unclear whether that is happening through abortion or IVF. Overall, through, our sex ratios are normal. An extremely rare phenomenon is thus being used in an effort to set a far-reaching precedent. Sex-selective abortion is odious. Banning it means allowing the government to decide what constitutes a legitimate reason for a woman to terminate a pregnancy, and forcing doctors to try to discern the motives of their patients.

South Korea is the one country in the world where there’s been genuine progress in reducing the incidence of sex-selective abortion. It didn’t happen through an abortion ban—abortion in that country has long been illegal, though widely available. What changed is that women’s status improved and archaic traditions started to lose their power. In most Asian countries, there’s a temporary correlation between increased wealth and education and sex selection, because privileged people have the most access to the relevant technology. But as South Korea shows, eventually, social change catches up.

“Avenues opened up for obtaining livelihoods and social status which were independent of lineage membership and adherence to familial expectations,” wrote Woojin Chung and Monica Das Gupta in a 2007 paper for the World Bank that sought to explain why sex ratios in South Korea were improving. “The accompanying urbanization resulted in people no longer being surrounded by patrilineal kin in their place of residence and work. This also opened up a possibility for relationships between parents and their children to be driven by affect rather than by rigid rules of gender and birth order. All these changes helped undercut the bases for son preference.”

The lesson is clear. Anyone who is genuinely concerned about sex-selective abortion should be working to fight sexism, its underlying cause. Laws that seek to limit women’s autonomy and confine them to traditional roles have it precisely backward. Unless, of course, limiting women’s autonomy and confining them to traditional roles has been the goal all along.
2 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
The Right’s ‘Gendercide’ Crusade to Limit Women’s Autonomy (Original Post) babylonsister May 2012 OP
K&R drm604 May 2012 #1
I busted Al Jazeera promoting this bs. EFerrari May 2012 #2

drm604

(16,230 posts)
1. K&R
Thu May 31, 2012, 07:51 AM
May 2012

They are slimy, aren't they? They drum up non-issues in order to achieve something quite different.

They claim to want to protect females in order to subjugate females.

They claim to want to protect voters in order to suppress voters.

They claim to want to protect Social Security in order to dismantle Social Security.

If you try to call them on it - oh no, you're completely misjudging us! We're just innocent kittens trying to do the right thing!

EFerrari

(163,986 posts)
2. I busted Al Jazeera promoting this bs.
Thu May 31, 2012, 12:39 PM
May 2012

They tweeted some question that asked about female genocide or infanticide or some idiocy like that. So I asked them why they were criminalizing our right to choose. One of their staffers asked me if I would preserve choice at the cost of "dwindling female population". Insane.

Latest Discussions»Issue Forums»Editorials & Other Articles»The Right’s ‘Gendercide’ ...