Sex-selective abortion is the practice of terminating a pregnancy based upon the predicted sex of the infant. The selective abortion of female fetuses is most common where male children are valued over female children, especially in parts of East Asia and South Asia, as well as in the Caucasus, Western Balkans, and to a lesser extent North America. Based on the third National Family and Health Survey, results showed that if both partners, mother and father, or just the father, preferred male children, sex-selective abortion was more common. In cases where only the mother prefers sons, this is likely to result in sex-selective neglect in which the child is not likely to survive past infancy.
Libertarians promote individual liberty and seek to minimize the role of the state. The abortion debate is mainly within right-libertarianism between cultural liberals and social conservatives as left-libertarians generally see it as a settled issue regarding individual rights, as they support legal access to abortion as part of what they consider to be a woman's right to control her body and its functions. Religious right and intellectual conservatives have attacked such libertarians for supporting abortion rights, especially after the demise of the Soviet Union led to a greater divide in the conservative movement between libertarians and social conservatives. Libertarian conservatives claim libertarian principles such as the non-aggression principle (NAP) apply to human beings from conception and that the universal right to life applies to fetuses in the womb. Thus, some of those individuals express opposition to legal abortion. According to a 2013 survey, 5.7/10 of American Libertarians oppose making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion.
Abortion in Canada is legal througout pregnancy, and is publicly funded as a medical procedure under the combined effects of the federal Canada Health Act and provincial health-care systems. However, access to services and resources varies by region. While some restrictions exist, Canada is one of the few nations with no criminal restrictions on abortion. Abortion is subject to provincial healthcare regulatory rules and guidelines for physicians. No provinces offer abortion on request at 24 weeks and beyond, although there are exceptions for certain medical complications.
Feminists for Life of America (FFL) is a non-profit, anti-abortion feminist, non-governmental organization (NGO). Established in 1972, and now based in Alexandria, Virginia, the organization publishes a biannual magazine, The American Feminist, and aims to reach young women, college students in particular.
Ann Marie Furedi is the former chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, the UK's largest independent abortion provider.
The genetics and abortion issue is an extension of the abortion debate and the disability rights movement. Since the advent of forms of prenatal diagnosis, such as amniocentesis and ultrasound, it has become possible to detect the presence of congenital disorders in the fetus before birth. Specifically, disability-selective abortion is the abortion of fetuses that are found to have non-fatal mental or physical defects detected through prenatal testing. Many prenatal tests are now considered routine, such as testing for Down syndrome. Women who are discovered to be carrying fetuses with disabilities are often faced with the decision of whether to abort or to prepare to parent a child with disabilities.
The human sex ratio is the ratio of males to females in a population in the context of anthropology and demography. In humans, the natural sex ratio at birth is slightly biased towards the male sex. It is estimated to be about 1.05 or 1.06 or within a narrow range from 1.03 to 1.06 males per female.
Lynne Segal is an Australian-born, British-based socialist feminist academic and activist, author of many books and articles, and participant in many campaigns, from local community to international. She has taught in higher education in London, England since 1970, at Middlesex Polytechnic from 1973. In 1999 she was appointed Anniversary Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, where she now works in the School of Psychosocial Studies.
The term "missing women" indicates a shortfall in the number of women relative to the expected number of women in a region or country. It is most often measured through male-to-female sex ratios, and is theorized to be caused by sex-selective abortions, female infanticide, and inadequate healthcare and nutrition for female children. It is argued that technologies that enable prenatal sex selection, which have been commercially available since the 1970s, are a large impetus for missing female children.
Abortion in China is legal throughout pregnancy and generally accessible nationwide. Abortions are available to most women through China's family planning programme, public hospitals, private hospitals, and clinics nationwide. China was one of the first developing countries to legalize abortion and make it easily accessible in the 1950s. Following the Chinese Communist Revolution and the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the country has periodically switched between more restrictive abortion policies to more liberal abortion policies and reversals. Abortion regulations may vary depending on the rules of the province. In an effort to curb sex-selective abortion, Jiangxi and Guizhou restrict non-medically necessary abortions after 14 weeks of pregnancy, while throughout most of China elective abortions are legal after 14 weeks. Although sex-selective abortions are illegal nationwide, they were previously commonplace, leading to a sex-ratio imbalance in China which still exists.
Abortion in Armenia is legal on request up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, and in special circumstances between 12 weeks and 22 weeks. Abortion has been legal since 23 November 1955, when Armenia was a republic of the Soviet Union. Pregnancies may be ended on request by the pregnant woman until the twelfth week and for medical and social reasons until the twenty-second week with a doctor's approval. Since 2016, when a law banning sex-selective abortion was passed, mandatory counseling is required before abortion along with a three-day waiting period. The law has been criticized as using sex-selective abortion as a pretext to restrict access to abortion, although the government denied this, and claimed that it did not intend to question women's right to access safe abortion.
Wendy Russell Davis is an American lawyer and Democratic Party politician from Fort Worth, Texas. Davis represented the 10th district in the Texas Senate from 2009 to 2015. She previously served on the Fort Worth City Council.
Female foeticide in India is the abortion of a female foetus outside of legal methods. A research by Pew Research Center based on Union government data indicates foeticide of at least 9 million females in the years 2000-2019. The research found that 86.7% of these foeticides were by Hindus, followed by Sikhs with 4.9%, and Muslims with 6.6%. The research also indicated an overall decline in preference for sons in the time period.
For years, the census data in China has recorded a significant imbalance sex ratio toward the male population, meaning there are fewer women than men. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the missing women or missing girls of China. In 2021, the male-to-female ratio of China is recorded at 104.61 to 100.
Angela Fiducia Heywood (1840–1935) was a radical writer and activist, known as a free love advocate, suffragist, socialist, spiritualist, labor reformer, and abolitionist.
The Medical Women's Federation is the largest UK body of women doctors. The organisation is dedicated to the advancement of the personal and professional development of women in medicine and to improving the health of women and their families in society. It was founded in 1917, and its headquarters are located in Tavistock Square, London.
Caroline Merula Deys was a British family planning doctor and later general practitioner. She won a key case against a General Medical Council complaint in 1972 that had been motivated by her work on legalising abortion in the UK. She performed around 4750 vasectomies in the 1970s, when she was the only female doctor specialising in the procedure in Europe.
Robyn Ngaire Norton is a New Zealand health researcher who is James Martin Fellow and Professor of Public Health at the University of New South Wales. Her research considers women and girls' health. She is the Founder of the George Institute for Global Health.
On 14 June 2016 Anu Bansal from Bulandshahr, India, received 80% burns to her body and died at Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi, a few days later. In July 2022, her husband, Manoj Bansal, was found guilty of killing her for "not giving birth to a son". He received life imprisonment and a fine of Rs 20,000.
