The House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice on Thursday was told that sex selection abortion, rampant in China and the reason that men now outnumber women there by 33 million, also happens in the United States, and is no less offensive than any other sex discrimination.
The hearing concerned Rep. Trent Frank's Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, which would prohibit abortion based on the gender of the baby.
Ann Higgins, who testified and recently authored a research paper called "Sex-Selection Abortion: The Real War on Women," told WND that abortion-for-all advocates "like to change the story and talk about women's rights."
In fact, she said, the argument is about "lethal sex discrimination against girls."
Just like killing unborn children because of their race, killing girls "just because they are girls" is not permissible, she said.
"We don't need to change the conversation," she said. "We need to prohibit those practices. It's not OK to assign value to an individual life because of their sex or their race."
Higgins' report was released by the Charlotte Lozier Institute.
"Despite advances in civil rights and the recognition by most developed nations that discrimination on the basis of sex alone is inherently unjust, a very real and pervasive form of sex discrimination is still permitted and practiced in the world today. Prenatal sex discrimination crosses cultural, ethnic, and national lines. It is practiced in many countries, including the U.S., via sex-selective abortion – choosing to abort a preborn child based solely on the child’s sex," she wrote.
Her research points out that the practice is global, and over the last 20 years, "the sex ratio at birth of certain sub-populations in the U.S. and U.K. has climbed sharply, resulting in highly unbalanced ratios in favor of males. Such a noticeable change in recent decades implicates the increased use of sex-selective abortion and the failure of abortion providers to uniformly reject abortion on these grounds."
She also explained that, "sex discrimination violates a fundamental liberty guaranteed by the Constitution – equal protection under the law," and there is reason "to think the Supreme Court might uphold a ban on sex-selective abortion."
"Sex-selection abortion has led to 'gendercide' – millions of missing girls worldwide. With our national laws among the most permissive on the planet and sex-selection being legal up to birth in the vast majority of states, the U.S. lacks moral authority to oppose this and ultimately end this practice everywhere," said Chuck Donovan, president of the Charlotte Lozier Institute.
"American lawmakers who value equality ought to take action now, and not wait for the problem to grow," he said.
The report says it's a "well-known problem" in China and India because of the cultural preference for sons, combined with political and economic influences.
It notes that more than 20 years ago, it was documented that 100 million girls and women were "missing" from the global population because of neglect, infanticide and inequalities in care.
"The figure is now estimated to be in excess of 160 million, with sex-selective abortion playing a major role," the report said.
"Those who claim to be concerned with women's rights can no longer ignore the need to ban sex-selective abortion in order to protect girls from 'gendercide,'" the report said.
The problem in America is slightly different, with the sex-selection abortions coming mostly based on the engineering of the next generation, a simple preference for a boy or a girl, the report said.
David Prentice, vice president at the Institute, noted recently, "Some opponents of prohibitions against sex-selection abortions state that such abortions are rare, but that is a tacit admission that some sex-selection abortions occur. Even one gender discrimination abortion is too many."
"Americans, as well as citizens of the United Kingdom, overwhelmingly oppose abortions performed for reasons of sex selection. A poll conducted by the Charlotte Lozier Institute in 2012 found that 77 percent of respondents opposed abortion in instances of sex selection (specifically abortion of girls)," the report said. "These results reflect the long-held legal traditions and mores of Americans in support of individual equality without respect to race, ethnicity, or sex."
The report continued, "The laws and policies we institute – or fail to institute – inform and educate our citizens about acceptable and ethical practices in society. Who would dispute, for example, that the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and 'Jim Crow' laws shaped attitudes about racial segregation and discrimination? Those laws needed to change. Just as with how our law now treats race discrimination, sex discrimination is likewise taken seriously in American jurisprudence because of our commitment to basic moral values involving human dignity. Sex discrimination violates a fundamental liberty guaranteed by the Constitution – equal protection under the law. The equal protection standard is applicable to gender-based classifications and 'require[s] 'an exceedingly persuasive justification' in order to survive constitutional scrutiny.' Sex discrimination is also prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which addresses discriminatory employment practices, prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sex, race, color, religion, or national origin."
Regarding the Supreme Court, which created the right to abortion in 1973 and has left the practice mostly unhindered since, the report said, "The current standard applied to abortion regulation by the court is that a state may not place a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion prior to viability. Sex-selection bans do not violate that standard. A ban on sex-selective abortion is, for the state, an expression of respect for life and a mechanism by which it can protect a person from sex discrimination. Additionally, if a ban on sex-selective abortion were put in place, an almost innumerable list of other reasons/options for a woman to choose elective abortion remains available – including the reason that the woman simply doesn't want to be pregnant whether or not the pregnancy was intended in the first place. When such myriad options exist, reasoning that a ban on a single discriminatory reason constitutes a 'substantial obstacle' collapses."
The report cited Hillary Clinton, a Democrat hopeful for this year's presidential race, as secretary of state, saying, "[I]t's important that the United States – be a leader in continuing to promote women's rights and women's equality. It is in our interest, our security interest. It is a moral imperative. And it creates a better basis for us to – seek a more peaceful, prosperous, progressive world."
Concluded the report, "'When a man steals to satisfy hunger, we may safely conclude that there is something wrong in society – so when a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is an evidence that either by education or circumstances she has been greatly wronged.' These words by early feminist Maddie H. Brinckerhoff seem to have faded from our national discourse. The problem of sex-selective abortion is rooted in something much deeper that the practice itself. It is rooted in the failure of our nation to recognize that sex-selective abortion tears at the very fabric of liberty by denying equal protection under the law to a segment of the population. If discrimination against a girl or boy on the basis of sex after he or she is born is prohibited, why then do we refuse to enact laws that protect those same children from lethal sex-discrimination prior to birth? We have thus far done a disservice to women and society as a whole by refusing to educate our citizenry on the importance of equality under the law in every instance of sex discrimination – including prenatal sex discrimination."