it manifests sexism. Tabitha M. Powledge’s view exemplifies this position:
I want to argue that we should not choose the sexes of our children because to do so is one of the most stupendously sexist acts in which it is possible to engage. It is the original sexist sin. This argument applies to both pre- and post-conception technologies. To destroy an extant fetus for this reason is more morally opprobrious than techniques aimed at conceiving a child of a particular sex, but they both are deeply wrong. They are wrong because they make the most basic judgment about the worth of a human being rest first and foremost on its sex.16
Rosalind Petchesky also argued that it was “blatantly sexist” for a woman “to get an abortion on the grounds that they prefer a different gender.”17 Along these lines, Mary Warren, a strong proponent of a woman’s right to abortion (including late-term abortions), simply maintained that it was morally wrong to “deprive a sentient human being of its life because of its sex,” but not because she thought it was sexist to do so.18
In more recent feminist writing on sex selection, the view that the practice is inherently sexist still prevails. I identify three variants of feminist objections to sex selection. First, feminists informed by postmodern and queer theories oppose sex selection because it supports the idea of gender as a binary category—male or female. These activists have argued that sex selection is inherently sexist because the practice “reject[s] the idea that gender is fluid” and is premised on the assumption that “sex and gender can be classified into two distinct male and female forms.”19 This view draws on the fundamental principle of postmodern feminism that gender is socially constructed.20 However, even if we assume that our ideal society is one where everyone believes that gender is fluid, preventing people from sex-selecting will do little to make people less sexist.
Second, another feminist argument against sex selection is that people who sex-select are more likely to force their children to conform to traditional gender expectations and roles. Berkowitz and Snyder have argued that parents who sex-select will have expectations that their children’s behavior will conform to a specific gender.21 Another commentator notes that “[i]f you’re going through the trouble and expense to select a child of a certain sex, you’re encouraging gender stereotypes that are damaging to women and girls … What if you get a girl who wants to play basketball?”22 It is, however, inaccurate to assume all or most people who want to select for a certain sex desire to constrain their children to traditional and oppressive gender roles.
Another author posits that it is sexist for a man who has two girls to select for a boy just because the man thinks that a boy would give him certain pleasures like playing ball or fishing. This man is thought to be sexist because he assumes that he could not have those pleasures with girls.23 Yet preventing this man from having a boy would not change his views and would not make it more likely that he would give his girl children more opportunities.
Let’s take a few other examples. What if a woman who has two boys desires a girl because she wants to have someone to have manicures and pedicures with? Is that sexist? And would this harm the girl she gives birth to? Should parents who want two daughters so that they can grow up sharing a bond with each other be permitted to sex-select? Should two gay men who want to have a boy because they feel they could relate to him better be permitted to sex-select? These are harder and less clear-cut cases to resolve than the ones used by feminists who argue that sex selection is inherently sexist.
Third, some people argue that by sex-selecting, parents make a statement that one sex is superior to another. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposes sex selection on these grounds. The organization concludes that even sex selection for family balancing purposes “violates the norm of equality between the sexes.”24 Incidentally, this association of American obstetricians and gynecologists justifies its policy position by reference to UN guidelines, which invariably only refer to countries where sex selection is practiced in favor of only boys. In societies where sex selection is practiced largely in favor of one sex, one could argue that this reflects a society that believes one sex is superior. On the other hand, in societies where parents select for both boys and girls in equal numbers, the practice does not necessarily violate the norm of equality between the sexes.
The feminists in the 1980s who vociferously claimed that sex selection is sexist argued with similar force that there should be no legal restrictions prohibiting it. This is because the push to make abortion legal was a prominent feature of the 1960s women’s movement in the United States. Powledge argued that “[t]o make it illegal to use prenatal diagnostic techniques for sex choice is to nibble away at our hard-won reproductive control, control that I think most of us believe is the absolute rock-bottom minimum goal we have got to keep achieved before we can achieve anything else.”25 To be sure, feminists opposed these bans not because they viewed sex selection as a separate right, but rather because they thought of the bans as restrictions on abortion rights.26
Feminist authors writing in the 1980s did not have to contend with widespread sex-selective abortions in India and China. At that time, ultrasound technology was not widespread and as a result abortions of female fetuses were not that common even in India and China. Thus, their opposition to restrictions on sex-selective abortions were formulated before many people were aborting female fetuses. Nevertheless, even after women in India and other parts of the world started to sex-select in great numbers, liberal feminists continued to oppose limitations on sex selection under any circumstances. In the article “Sex Selection: Treating Different Cases Differently,” Bernard Dickens, Rebecca Cook and their coauthors point out that there is an “ethical injustice” in treating sex selection in a place like Canada as if it is the same as in a country like India.27 Consistent with my argument for contextualization of cross-border practices in Chapter 1, the authors argue that sex-selective abortion should not be regulated in Canada based on how the practice is undertaken in India.28
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