Read this interesting exchange of ideas, opinions and abuses(!) on the India times website around the amniocentesis debate. Some ppl were outraged that the blogger had questioned the logic behind making "amnio" illegal. ofcourse some anti- abortion camp ppl quickly jumped in & wrote "ban all abortions"...It was great fodder for my paper idea!
Here's my two bits on it:
1. There is danger in conflating "making sex selective abortion illegal" with "making abortion" illegal. Much of the comments seem to advocate banning "foeticide" in general. I won't bother going into the whole pro-choice debate - cos it's pretty well-established.
2. But while for the West pro-choice is quite a hassle -free argument (atleast among progressive ppl) - it gest sticky for a culture like India where there is such high prevalence of son preference. I thought the blogger was raising a good point - which comes up oftne in the debate around 'whether abnormal fetus should be aborted before they are born and cause parents emotional and finanacila stress".. The age old question of eugenics - only the "normal and healthy shoul;d be allowed to live - unfortunatley for India girls qualify as "abnormal".
3. Is making female foeticide illegal a good solution? I don't think the blogger was at all questioning the ethic of female foeticide. He , like most of the commenters, believes that it's ethically wrong. BUT, is making it illegal going to make anything better? I remeber reading a similar thing that had originally appeared more than a decade ago in Economic and Political weekly by Dharma Kumar. That was pretty much the same argument as the blogger here - just more academic!
Kumar Dharma, “Male Utopias or Nightmares?” Economic and Political Weekly, Volume XVIII, No.3, January 15, 1983, 61-64.
Unarguable, patriarchy, dowry system, the cultural norm that daughters cannot provide intergenartional supprt needs to be challenged. But in the shorter term is passing laws that ban female foeticde at all helpful or are they counter productive? If u make it illegal, familes will resort to unofficial ways of getting the female fetus aborted - making it more likely that the abortion will be unsafe for the woman.... There is a lot more involved here than just getting outraged and calling the blogger names!
Here's my two bits on it:
1. There is danger in conflating "making sex selective abortion illegal" with "making abortion" illegal. Much of the comments seem to advocate banning "foeticide" in general. I won't bother going into the whole pro-choice debate - cos it's pretty well-established.
2. But while for the West pro-choice is quite a hassle -free argument (atleast among progressive ppl) - it gest sticky for a culture like India where there is such high prevalence of son preference. I thought the blogger was raising a good point - which comes up oftne in the debate around 'whether abnormal fetus should be aborted before they are born and cause parents emotional and finanacila stress".. The age old question of eugenics - only the "normal and healthy shoul;d be allowed to live - unfortunatley for India girls qualify as "abnormal".
3. Is making female foeticide illegal a good solution? I don't think the blogger was at all questioning the ethic of female foeticide. He , like most of the commenters, believes that it's ethically wrong. BUT, is making it illegal going to make anything better? I remeber reading a similar thing that had originally appeared more than a decade ago in Economic and Political weekly by Dharma Kumar. That was pretty much the same argument as the blogger here - just more academic!
Kumar Dharma, “Male Utopias or Nightmares?” Economic and Political Weekly, Volume XVIII, No.3, January 15, 1983, 61-64.
Unarguable, patriarchy, dowry system, the cultural norm that daughters cannot provide intergenartional supprt needs to be challenged. But in the shorter term is passing laws that ban female foeticde at all helpful or are they counter productive? If u make it illegal, familes will resort to unofficial ways of getting the female fetus aborted - making it more likely that the abortion will be unsafe for the woman.... There is a lot more involved here than just getting outraged and calling the blogger names!
posted by Amrita Pande at 7:13 AM
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