by Rich Lowry
An interesting New York Times piece last week captured how that (supposedly) most modern and liberal of rights, abortion, can serve the most retrograde of impulses.
According to the Times, various advertisements for sex-selection services, one of which strongly hints at abortion, have appeared in the two publications geared to Indian expatriates living in the United States.
Indian families presumably have the traditional preference for a son over a daughter — so they would want to learn the sex of their fetus only to destroy it if it's a female.
This is why sex-discrimination tests have been banned in India (if ineffectively). But here in the United States where abortion reigns and the most tepid efforts to tame it are bitterly resisted, encouraging sex-selection abortion is part of the pageantry of “choice.”
It is a sign of the hold abortion has on the Left that it trumps all other P.C. sensitivities.
In our political culture, few things are so nefarious as “disparate impact.” If the bids of black contractors are being disproportionately rejected, it's a budding scandal. But if abortion disproportionately erases black children — as it does — that is a fact hardly worthy of mention.
We have a national conversation over “the crisis of girls” supposedly losing confidence in their adolescence, but to the extent that sex-selection abortion exists in the U.S., it surely works to the disadvantage of very young girls — but not a peep from the feminists.
In our A.D.A.-crazed culture, movie theaters have to be equipped to assist the near-deaf, but no one complains at the way children with Down's Syndrome are systematically eliminated from the womb. (Last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, by the way, in an article on “Big Families,” profiled some heroically “pro-life” families — parents that go out of their way to adopt handicapped children over and over again.)
All these politically incorrect abortions get a pass just like all the others, because the abortion lobby hates the idea that any abortion is in any way problematic. That right cast a shadow over the whole enterprise.
To its credit, one of the Indian-American publications has decided to refuse to run anymore of the sex-selection ads. Feminists should be delighted. Shouldn't they?
(This update courtesy of the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email infonet@prolifeinfo.org.)
Related Links:
Roe v. Wade: 28 Years of Life Denied
www.roevwade.org
Pregnancy Centers Online
www.pregnancycenters.org
California Couple Keep Paying UK Surrogate Mom
San Diego, CA — A California couple who hired a British woman to have a baby for them and then backed out when they found she was carrying twins will continue paying her medical expenses despite a bitter court battle the three are involved in, attorneys said on Thursday.
Surrogate mother Helen Beasley, 26, who is preparing to deliver twins in December, will receive $6,500 from Charles Wheeler and Martha Berman of Berkeley, California on Monday, the couple's attorney, Monty McIntyre said.
The couple will “continue to make payments to Ms. Beasley in the future consistent with the schedule set forth in the (original) contract,” McIntyre said. “Their concern is to make sure medical care and attention is given to make sure that the unborn children are getting good medical treatment.”
The couple, whom Beasley found via the Internet, were to pay her about $19,000 to carry the baby to term.
McIntyre declined to comment on how much Beasley, a legal secretary and single mother of a 7 year-old boy, has received to date. Neither Beasley nor her lawyer were available for comment.
Beasley struck the surrogacy deal with Wheeler and Berman in February. She later gave her verbal consent to undergo an abortion procedure called “selective reduction” before the 12th week of pregnancy if there were multiple unborn children, according to court papers.
The following month, Beasley was impregnated with Wheeler's sperm and a donated egg. During the eighth week of pregnancy, Beasley told the couple she was carrying twins. She alleged that Wheeler and Berman waited until the 13th week before instructing her to abort one of the babies. She refused and later moved to San Diego to give birth and pressure the couple to take responsibility for the babies.
In June, the couple contacted Beasley through an attorney, who said they were not interested in taking the children, and that she should assign her surrogacy agreement to other parents.
On Aug. 1, Beasley sued the couple in San Diego Family Court for breach of contract and fraud, seeking unspecified damages for medical expenses and emotional suffering. The case has yet to be resolved.
