The House is set to vote Thursday on a controversial bill that aims to ban sex-selective abortions by fining or imprisoning doctors who perform them.
As pretty much the entirety of the issue the situation is fucked up.
How would you enforce it, while keeping the doctor-patient confidentiality framework in place, for example.
How does it play out in terms of choice philosophy - presumably if the fetus is not considered alive/sentient/whatever to begin with, than the question of discrimination doesn't even apply. So why would it be illegal to abort the one gender but not the other?
On the other hand - gender eugenics. Icky.
I don't pay too much attention to the intricacies of choice/life debate, but I don't think this aspect has been a big part of the conversation until now. This bill is not going to pass, it looks like, but somehow I suspect it is the first shot in a whole new conversation.
Plus what are the long-term implications. I tend toward the idea that there can be either the biological or environmental origins for one's sexuality. If that turns out to be true, this is going to set precedents for (some) parents picking/choosing whether or not to have kids based on predicted sexuality.
IIRC, there are already this type of debates going on vis-a-vis the Deaf Culture thesis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_cultu
And this is all going to seem like simple and straightforward good old days when genetic engineering begins to enter the common place.
Wanna build a 'perfect kid'?
Weird times.
2012-05-31 05:33 pm (UTC)
J