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False Framings: The Co-Opting of Sex-Selection by the Anti-Abortion Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Seema Mohapatra
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Extract

Sujatha Jesudason and Tracy Weitz provide an empirical examination of the framing of public discourses related to assisted reproductive technology (ART) and abortion by examining two bills considered by the California legislature in “Eggs and Abortion: The Language of Protection in Legislation Regulating Abortion and Egg Donation in Debate over Two California Laws.” Jesudason and Weitz analyze the framing of two different legislative efforts: one allowing non-physician practitioners to perform non-surgical abortions and the other removing the prohibition on egg donor payment in the research setting. Jesudason and Weitz identified three different memes that were present in the discussion of these two bills: health care providers and scientists as inherently suspect, denial of women of agency through speaking about them as passive actors that things happen to, and the focus on potential harms and the need to protect women from harm. What was most compelling about their article is that they convincingly show how these themes were used as political tools by both anti-choice and pro-choice groups in California. Jesudason and Weitz note that “frames and language matter.”

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , Summer 2015 , pp. 270 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2015

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References

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In this commentary, I am using the term “woman-protective” to mean actually saving female fetuses from being destroyed, as this is how it has been raised in the sex-selective abortion context. The term has been used with a different meaning in another context by Reva Siegal. Seigal refers to woman-protective language as language that paternalistically suggests that women need to be protected from their poorly reasoned abortion decisions (which she convincingly argues violates the equal protection clause). See Siegel, R., “The New Politics of Abortion: An Equality Analysis of Woman-Protective Abortion Restrictions,” University of Illinois Law Review 2007, no. 3 (2007): 991–1053, at 994.Google Scholar
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Unfortunately, sex-selective abortion is a real issue in some countries, such as India. India's government has responded to such actions with the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act (now known as the PreConception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act) (“PNDTA”.) This Act prevents the use of ultrasound or other prenatal techniques to reveal a baby's gender prior to birth. Although it has been in effect for many years, enforcement has been lax. I have argued elsewhere that curbing son-preference by educating girls and enforcing dowry bans may be more effective than PNDTA's bans on gender identification. See Mohapatra, , supra note 4, at 715.Google Scholar
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