Why the anti-abortion movement is embracing gender equality

2016/04/21 Leave a comment

Martin Patriquin nails it:

No pro-choice type himself, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper was at least pragmatic enough to stamp out any anti-abortion rumblings emanating from the socially conservative recesses of his party.

But gender equality is another story entirely. While we may be a cautious bunch on the issue of abortion, we Canadians are wildly, flamingly liberal on equality of sexes—94 per cent in favour of it, according to but one recent poll.

Pro-life types have cannily glommed onto sex-selective abortion as a means to demonstrate the evils of the pro-choice narrative run amok. They’ve rebranded the practice “gendercide,” and one politician amongst the ranks has attempted (unsuccessfully) to introduce a motion condemning it. They’ve appointed more female spokespeople. Twenty years ago, women who received abortions were murderers. Today, they are more likely to be victims.

It’s part of what University of Ottawa researchers Kelly Gordon and James Saurette call the “pro-woman” rhetoric of the anti-abortion movement. “Anti-abortionists have been losing since 1969 [when the Canadian government liberalized abortion laws],” Gordon told me recently. “They’ve been viewed as being very anti-woman. This is a strategic shift. Concentrating on sex-selective abortions is a far more sympathetic discourse.”

Enacting a law against sex-selective abortion would be folly. In India, a country of 1.2 billion, there were all of 20 convictions between 1994 and 2010, according to the government report. But then, preventing sex-selective abortions isn’t the goal of pro-lifers in this country; prohibiting abortion outright is. Gender equality is just a useful vehicle to this end.

A useful vehicle, and a Trojan horse. Restricting reproductive rights would be far easier with an existing law banning what amounts to an aberration of the practice. By draping itself in the flag of gender equality, the anti-abortion movement is rehashing a debate it lost long ago. It’s a savvy and cynical move, and should be recognized as such.

Ultimately, of course, the way to curb sex-selective abortions is roughly the same as curbing the frequency of abortions in general—not through legislation, but education. This country’s long-diminishing abortion rate is the best testament to this fact.

Source: Why the anti-abortion movement is embracing gender equality

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Attitudes, inequalities at root of ‘missing’ girls: Balkissoon

2016/04/16 Leave a comment

Denise Balkissoon on the study showing a prevalence of Indo-Canadian sex selection abortions:

But it’s short-sighted to brand this an immigrant problem or to react by restricting women’s rights. This is a problem of tradition and history, and modern Asia is troubled by it, too. While India and China are scrambling to find real fixes, the Journal noted that South Korea seems to have turned around a centuries-old preference for boys in a single generation.

Sex-selective abortions took off in South Korea after 1980, when ultrasounds became widely available. By 1990, the Journal notes, 116.5 boys were born for every 100 girls (the average in most Western countries, including Canada, is 105 boys to 100 girls). Korean advocates for women and girls didn’t respond by attempting to restrict reproductive freedom. Instead, they targeted issues of women’s inequality; for example, pushing for legislation to allow families to use the mother’s surname, instead of the father’s, as was traditional. The government was also persuaded to subsidize child care up to the age of 5, and to give incentives to companies offering paternity leave. The results were extraordinary: By 2014, the ratio of male to female babies was at the 105-to-100 level that health experts consider natural.

If we want the same result for Canada’s South Asian babies, this is the template to follow. Restricting access to health information or abortions might help to fix the numbers, but it’s the stories behind the numbers that matter.

I don’t just want the “right” number of girl babies to show up every year. I want to end discrimination against the girls currently living with parents who had them reluctantly, and to make sure that women have options if they’re abused for not producing boys. I want senior citizens to know they’ll be taken care of even if their sons don’t bring home wives, and I want 35-year-olds to feel valued by their communities whether or not they have partners.

Maybe the result of all that would be fewer abortions in Canada. But that’s not the goal we should prioritize.

Source: Attitudes, inequalities at root of ‘missing’ girls – The Globe and Mail

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