Again, if you really believe that a woman has a right to choose to abort, you should support that right no matter why she makes the choice. If she wants to have a boy child and thus decides to abort a girl, why is that any less valid than doing it because she doesn't want a child at all, or it would be a burden, or any other reason she might have? She's either free to make that choice, or she isn't.
While I agree with this reasoning in principle, your view is a bit narrow, don't you think? I mean, we have the right to freedom of speech unless there is a prevailing public interest to prevent said speech, such as when speech is defamatory, libelous, inciteful, or threatens the public well-being (yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater).
Yes. But the principle (yeah, I'm using that word again, so buckle your seatbelt!) behind such restrictions is the concept of competing rights. It's not really about "public good", but rather "harm to others". My right to not be trampled to death by a false claim that the building is on fire outweighs your right to freely speak a lie about the existence of said fire. We can (or should) be able to trace any infringement of rights to this concept. The second more than one person exists in a society, there will be infringement of rights. But we should make that choice based on which right is more important to protect. That's clear in the case of someone falsely calling "fire" in a crowded theater. Of course, some cases are not so clear.
In the case of the pro-choice position, the argument is that the woman's right to control her own body outweighs the right of the growing fetus to be born and live. Or alternatively, is based on the argument that the growing fetus has no rights and thus the woman's right to control her body is absolute. There is no "social good" argument (or there shouldn't be). In the US at least, Roe v Wade does allow for growing rights for the fetus (else they'd not have placed any restrictions on abortion at all). But the issue is and always should be defined within that "competing rights" concept.
The restriction in this case isn't about competing rights. If the woman's right to choose to abort outweighs the right (if any exist) of the fetus to be born, then that can't change based on the *** of the fetus. She either has that right, or she doesn't.
I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that the act of attempting to prevent a woman from knowing the *** of a fetus so as to prevent abortions based on that criteria is in violation of the claimed right to choose to abort that has been championed by left leaning political activists for decades. My question is whether that fight (at least for some) was ever really about the "right" at all, but rather to attempt to achieve a social objective (mainly getting poor single women to abort their children). This ties into my oft-stated observation that when government takes responsibility for something (by paying for it), it will eventually act to limit people's actions with regard to that thing. So if the government is creating a social safety net, it encounters the need to reduce costs/burdens on that system. If too many poor single women are having children they can't afford, then fighting for their "right" to abort makes a **** of a lot of sense, doesn't it?
But if by aborting more girl fetuses than boys, it creates some imbalance of sexes down the line, that *also* presents a challenge to a planned/controlled society. So the "right" should disappear in that case.
If you support the right to make that choice, then you must give the women the freedom to make it as they wish. Else, it's not really a right. It's just an action that is treated as a right when it aligns with a social agenda, but ceases to be one when it doesn't. Which means, it's not a right
. It's population control.
Yeah. I realize that this is an uncomfortable line of thought for many. And I'm sure I'll get tons of rate downs for saying it. But call my a cynic, but I think about these sorts of things. I question why governments take the actions they take. I question why movements do so. I always attempt to understand what drives those things. I've long believed that many of the rights fought for by liberal activists aren't really about rights, but about a desire to use the idea of rights to generate desired social outcomes. And this case seems to bear it out here.
That's not to say that everyone who is pro choice falls into that category. It means that if you are pro choice, then you should be for the right reasons, and not just because you're following an organization, or a cause, or whatever. That leads you to not realize when those rights stop being rights and become about control.
One could easily foresee some law stating that doctors may withhold gender information from parents if they have sufficient reason to suspect that the parents will abort based on this information. However, as I said above, this is a legal clusterfuck waiting to happen when we try to define "sufficient reason."
I think if we start out understanding the "why" of something, then it's easier to determine when we're violating our principles. The danger comes when we don't understand the principles at all. Then it's easy to manipulate the outcomes. Just label something a particular way and people will follow.