Women's rights X2

Australian Senator John Madigan (not the most charismatic guy ever) has introduced a bill seeking to ban abortion on gender grounds. A friend who is pro-abortion linked to this article -  a fair-handed presentation of the role the federal government really does play in supporting abortion both nationally and internationally (through Medicare and AusAid), and a warning that conservative politicians may be angling to use the issue as leverage for their vote on other matters. All of which is, as I said, fair. But what really interested me was that the article failed to address, or even mention, the bill's central theme. It was all about where Madigan's bill might take us, never about the content of the bill itself - gender-based abortion.

I understand if liberal commentators and thinkers are conflicted by this issue and unsure of how to respond, because here we see two values equally cherished by the Left butting up against each other - a woman's right to choose what she does with her body and life in one corner versus the protection and advancement of women and their equal standing with men in the other. I trust (and hope) that all commentators would instintively recognise that it is abhorrent to abort a foetus simply because it is a girl (or a boy: but this would probably never happen - which makes the issue all the more pointed). So I don't think it's at this point that the hesitation comes - I think it's the implication of what such a concession would mean that gives pause.

To ban gender-based abortions would erode the essential power of the pro-choice argument - that women have a fundamental, enduring right to make decisions about their pregnancy. Now if this bill were passed, women could still retain this right . . . except when their decisions were wrong (and here we're talking capital "W", misogyny Wrong). And if it's possible for us to have it wrong here, maybe there are other times where our choices are bad and should not be honoured. Maybe this right isn't so fundamental afterall.

If we're going to talk about where this sort of legislation might take us, let's not just do so by treating it as some sort of generalised 'pro-life legislation', but let's actually engage with the specificity of its content. To have any sort of integrity, the Left needs an answer to the question, "Should a woman be allowed to abort their foetus when they find out it's a girl?".