According to pro-choice activist and author Janet Hadley, sex selection abortions in India are extremely common:
“All over India, there are clinics performing amniocentesis and ultrasound scans, even in districts too poor to afford supplies of clean drinking water. Every day, an estimated 3000 female fetuses are aborted. And there are doctors making a mint.”
Janet Hadley “Abortion: between Freedom and Necessity” (Great Britain: Virago Press 1996) 88
Despite what pro-choicers often say, sex selection abortions are not confined to India, China, and other countries. Sometimes they happen in the United States.
According to an Indian woman who had an abortion because her fetus was female:
“and I am his wife so I have to give him a son. How can it continue? Maybe I will never have a son? Maybe it is my fault? Only God knows. But what do I have to do? I am so afraid, afraid that my husband will divorce me and take a new wife who will give him sons… He is a man. He has a right to a son.”
V. Roggencamp “Abortion of a Special Kind: Male Sex Selection in India” R. Adritti, RD Klein and ass Minden editors “Test Tube Women: What Future for Motherhood?” (London, England: Pandora 1984)page 272
Pro-Choice feminists have an especially hard time attacking sex selection abortions. The abortion of female unborn babies solely because they are female is obviously a crime against women and a case of misogyny. However, pro-choice feminists have stood beside the argument that abortion is okay for any reason, and that a woman’s motives for having an abortion should not be challenged. Therefore, they have no leg to stand on when they are confronted with abortions that clearly reek of sexism.
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