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To go to the Sex-Selection Abortion index
page, click here.
To view or download a pdf version of this
letter, click
here.
The following letter was sent by National Right to
Life to members of the U.S. House of Representatives on
the morning of May 31, 2012.
May 31, 2012
RE: today’s House roll call on the Prenatal
Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA) (H.R. 3541)
(ban on abortion as method of sex selection)
Dear Member of Congress:
Today, the House of Representatives will conduct a roll
call vote, under Suspension of the Rules, on a bill to
prohibit the use of abortion as a method of sex
selection in the United States – the Prenatal
Nondiscrimination Act (H.R. 3541). The National Right to
Life Committee (NRLC), the nationwide federation of
state right-to-life organizations, strongly urges you to
vote to pass this important legislation.
NRLC intends to include the roll call on H.R. 3541 in
the NRLC scorecard of roll calls on key right-to-life
issues for the 112th Congress. A “present” vote has the
same effect on a Member’s score as a “no” vote.
The use of abortion as a means of sex selection is a
major social problem in a number of Asian countries,
including China and India. There are credible estimates
that 160 million women and girls are missing from the
world due to sex selection, and the figure may be even
higher. Writing in the Fall 2011 issue of The New
Atlantis, political economist Nicholas Eberstadt of the
American Enterprise Institute observed, “In terms of its
sheer toll in human numbers, sex-selective abortion has
assumed a scale tantamount to a global war against baby
girls.”
Multiple academic papers have put forward evidence that
the practice of sex-selection by abortion is increasing
in the United States, especially although not
exclusively within communities of immigrants from Asia.
For example, a study by researchers at the University of
Connecticut, published in Prenatal Diagnosis in March
2011, concluded, “The male to female livebirth sex ratio
in the United States exceeded expected biological
variation for third+ births to Chinese, Asian Indians
and Koreans, strongly suggesting prenatal sex
selection.”
In another powerful study published in 2011, Dr. Sunita
Puri and three other researchers at the University of
California interviewed “65 immigrant Indian women in the
United States who had pursued fetal sex selection.” They
wrote: “We found that 40% of the women interviewed had
terminated prior pregnancies with female fetuses and
that 89% of women carrying female fetuses in their
current pregnancy pursued an abortion.” This study
discusses in detail the multiple forms of pressure and
outright coercion to which such women are often
subjected: “Forty women (62%) described verbal abuse
from their female in laws or husbands. . . . One-third
of women described past physical abuse and neglect
related specifically to their failing to produce a male
child.” As a result, “women reported having multiple
closely spaced pregnancies with terminations of female
fetuses under pressure to have a male child.” (“‘There
is such a thing as too many daughters, but not too many
sons’,” Social Science & Medicine 72 (2011), 1169-1176)
Section 3 of H.R. 3541 would amend Title 18 of the U.S.
Code to make it an offense, punishable by up to five
years imprisonment, to knowingly do any one of the
following four things: (1) perform an abortion “knowing
that such abortion is sought based on the sex or gender
of the child”; (2) use “force or threat of force . . .
for the purpose of coercing a sex-selection abortion”;
(3) solicit or accept funds to perform a sex-selection
abortion; or (4) transport a woman into the U.S. or
across state lines for this purpose. The bill explicitly
provides, “A woman upon whom a sex-selection abortion is
performed may not be prosecuted or held civilly liable
for any violation of this section, or for a conspiracy
to violate this section.” The bill also explicitly
provides that healthcare providers do not have any
“affirmative duty to inquire as to the motivation for
the abortion, absent the healthcare provider having
knowledge or information that the abortion is being
sought based on the sex or gender of the child.”
Please note that H.R. 3541 no longer contains the
original parallel provisions dealing with abortions that
are solicited, coerced, or performed on the basis of the
race of the unborn child. The impact of the abortion
industry on minority communities, an important issue in
its own right, has been set aside for another day. The
bill now deals solely with sex-selection abortions.
Of course, pro-life Members will support this
legislation. But it is to be hoped that even many
Members who deem themselves “pro-choice” will recoil at
the notion that “freedom of choice” must include even
the choice to abort a little unborn girl, merely because
she is a girl. Members who recently have embraced
contrived political rhetoric asserting they are
resisting a “war on women” must reflect on whether they
wish to be recorded as being defenders of the escalating
war on baby girls.
NRLC urges you to support the Prenatal Nondiscrimination
Act.
Respectfully,
Carol Tobias
President
Douglas Johnson
Legislative Director
Susan T. Muskett, J.D.
Senior Legislative Counsel
National Right to Life Committee (NRLC)
federallegislation@nrlc.org
http://www.nrlc.org
To view or download a pdf version of this
media advisory, click
here.
To go to the Sex-Selection Abortion index
page, click here.
To return to the NRLC homepage, click
here
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