Thursday, September 27, 2012

Gender Selection Hypocrisy in Canada

Reposted from Blue Like You - April 29, 2012:


Canada's Minister for Status of Women Rona Ambrose was outraged about a Canadian cultural publication carrying an ad for gender selection in the U.S. (Globe):
Rona Ambrose called on the Indo-Canadian Voice and other publishers to reject such ads, noting that the practice of pre-conception gender selection is illegal in Canada and perpetuates discrimination against girls that is prevalent in some cultural communities. “At the end of the day, we are fighting sexism here,” Ms. Ambrose said in an interview Monday. “We’re fighting this perception that girls are not equal to boys.”
Canada prohibits sex selection of an in-vitro embryo, except in rare cases, via the 2004 Assisted Human Reproduction Act. And yet gender selection post-conception [aka abortion] is perfectly legal; albeit not necessarily socially acceptable. But of course that would involve a moral judgement, and who has the right to inflict their moral values on others? But how can we logically ignore the obvious? It still sexism when females are deliberately eliminated due to a preference for males. And so in Canada we have a situation where the mere thought of pre-conception gender selection is abhorrent, but post-conception termination of a female fetus is a woman's right! How does anyone square that circle? And please don't tell me we need a law to ban the medical community from revealing the gender of a fetus. The Courts would challenge that in a heartbeat [see end of article], and the U.S. Medical Tourism industry would be only too happy to fill in the gaps.
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Related Forced into abortion 6 times, woman turns whistleblower - Times of India.  Ah I know what you're thinking - that could never happen here. Just like Honour Killing. Is a Fertility Clinic’s ‘Gender Selection’ Ad Really So Bad if the Result is Fewer Abortions? - Babble
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Tuesday Update A Debate Worth Having - SNN (Ezra & Stephen Woodworth)