I wish to comment on an editorial published yesterday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal regarding the “repugnant” practice of “female feticide” or sex-selective abortions. See http://www.cmaj.ca/content/early/2012/01/16/cmaj.120021.
I am very happy that this respected medical journal is treating this very important subject with the attention it deserves.
However, I am concerned by the lack of moral consistency this subject engenders in many Canadians.
On the one hand, we rightly conclude it is morally repugnant to terminate a pregnancy for an undesired sex; on the other hand we conclude it is morally acceptable to terminate a pregnancy for almost any other reason.
Canadians are trying to have their moral cake and eat it too. Why is it repugnant to kill an unborn child because she’s a girl, but OK to kill her because her parents already have all the children they want?
The fact we need to face as a society is that female feticide is repugnant because killing little girls is wrong.
And if killing little girls is wrong (and we know it is) then abortion is wrong too, because that’s what abortion does every day, many times over in Canada.
So yes, let’s do what we can to reduce and end sex-selective abortions, but if we really want to be consistent in our morality let’s do what we can to end all abortions.
Jared White
