And while the bill does provide penalties for any physician who performs sex-selection abortions, these are imposed only if the doctor is aware that the abortion is being sought for sex-selection reasons.
It is beyond any civilized human's comprehension why the Obama administration would oppose the proposed Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011; after all, sex-selection abortion is already prohibited in Britain, from whom the US has adopted most of its legal framework. One would think that Mr. Obama, a self-described constitutional scholar and a black man, would support opposition to any discriminatory practice in the Land of the Free.
Ironically, Planned Parenthood, which has long proclaimed its defense of women, particularly in regard to abortion rights, has aligned itself with the administration in opposing this bill which seeks to end the reprehensible war on women that is the sex-selection abortion.
So now the USA is descending to the barbarism of China and India. Oh, wait! Didn't China outlaw sex-selection abortions recently?
Article comments
1 - Dan(Miller)
This would be an interesting experiment: introduce legislation with essentially the same wording as in the recently rejected legislation but substituting "race selection" for "sex selection."
2 - Clav
Hmm. Interesting idea, Dan(Miller).
Wonder if Marco Rubio would be willing?
3 - Dan(Miller)
Clav, as you doubtless recall, in Trial by Jury the judge was faced with an allegation by the plaintiff in a breach of promise marriage suit that when the defendant became tipsy he would beat her. The Judge's solution was to the evidentiary problem was, "Let's make him tipsy, gentlemen, and try."
Does Marco Rubio drink?
4 - Dr Dreadful
This bill was essentially little more than an attempt to intimidate women.
It was toothless and therefore useless. All a woman would have had to do was to deny that she was having an abortion for sex selection reasons, and the law would have been powerless.
There's quite enough stupid legislation on the books already. Good riddance.
5 - Glenn Contrarian
The bill was right up there with the "Let's ban Sharia law from being implemented in government" laws that several Republican legislatures have been pushing in their efforts to build jobs, jobs, jobs for the economy.
Clavos, the bill was just wedge-issue politics and nothing more - I'm really surprised you couldn't see it for what it was.
6 - Glenn Contrarian
And Clavos -
If you don't think it was wedge-issue politics, perhaps you should look at the Southern states that are passing bills that would essentially require a woman who miscarries to PROVE that it was accidental, that it wasn't murder or negligent homicide. Tennessee passed just such a bill, too. What were the Republicans saying in 2010? Oh, yeah - it was "jobs, jobs, jobs".
Okay? It's time for government to get OUT of the business of regulating what women do and don't do with their wombs. WOMEN know what is best for women. But of course, the House GOP seems to think that women don't need to be consulted when it comes to women's health issues.
7 - Igor
...and next year they ban abortions of males. Etc.
8 - Clav
It's time for government to get OUT of the business of regulating what women do and don't do with their wombs.
Absolutely agree with you.
As long as the government ALSO gets OUT of the business of my private decisions as well. For starters, they can stop trying to regulate what we eat, stop prohibiting recreational drugs, stop coming up with such intrusive and asinine ideas as defining and prohibiting speech, etc.
But that will never happen, because if they were to do so, they'd lose all their power over us, unless they could get (or keep) us on the welfare, disability or unemployment doles.
9 - Glenn Contrarian
Don't change the subject, Clavos - you wrote an article wherein the government WOULD be involved in whether abortions could or could not be had, but now you're agreeing that government should be out of the business of regulating what women do and don't do with their wombs.
Can't have it both ways, friend - choose!
10 - Clav
Abortion of males would probably greatly improve the race. Most of what's historically gone wrong in the world has been at the hands of men, not women.
11 - Glenn Contrarian
Agreed...but you still can't have it both ways.
12 - Clav
Why not? Obama and Romney do.
You're discriminating against me; violating my civil rights.
If that handsome, articulate inept guy in the White House can do it, why can't I? Oh, wait, i know why -- sorry, forgot my place for a second there.
Carry on.
13 - Zingzing
This headline is worthy of fox news. The proposed law is silly and meaningless, just abortion politics at play, nothing more. And the framing of it as being automatically against females... Hrm. It is a dumb reason to get an abortion, but it's just an attempt to make abortion laws so sticky that you can't have one for this reason and that reason and this other reason and that one over there, and when does it end? It doesn't, and that's the right wing trying to be clever little shits and no one needs it.
14 - Dr Dreadful
Why not? Obama and Romney do.
Ah, go easy on Romney, Clav. He just wants what's best for Amercia.
15 - Igor
I suppose that in Romneys estimation what's best for America is what's best for Bain Capital, so the country should be liquidated, it's assets sold off, and the proceeds returned to Bain where he will get a 20% commission, as capital gains, so that he gets a favorable tax rate.
16 - Pam Messingham
Isn't this totally pointless when you can't even determine the sex of a baby until 20 weeks and they are trying to limit abortions at 16?
17 - Glenn Contrarian
Clav -
Pam's got a good point - that's Arizona's new law she's talking about.
18 - Arch Conservative
The left's "it's not a baby it's a ball of cells argument" kinda flies out the window when you show up on Planned Parenthood's doorstep saying "I want an abortion because it's the wrong sex."
19 - Zingzing
Never mind that most abortions happen well before the gender is known and that females are born with more frequency since abortion was legalized And that there's no evidence one gender is aborted more often than the other in the us...