I wonder what's going through the heads of people in the USA when they make gender selections. At least the people from India had an excuse in that boys would support them in their old age. Gender is a fairly unimportant indicator of what your future child will grow into, so parents are making these choices based on very poor reasoning, some sort of stereotyped mental image of what a kid is going to be based on their gender. I feel sorry for the kids of these morons who spend all this time, effort and money (not to mention dumping in the garbage bin the potential lives that didn't happen to have the right gender) if they DON'T grow into the steretyped view of masculinity/feminity that mommy and daddy labor under.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not weeping because human life is pwecious and even a two-cell fetus counts the same as human being under some supernatural law. People die all the time for all kinds of reasons. So it goes. What bothers me is that it's another instance of human beings interefering in something that has already been fairly balanced by nature, namely the ratio of male to female in the population. Human beings have already screwed around with nature enough; isn't this one more thing that we should probably just let alone?

Omphaloskepsis:

I feel sorry for the kids of these morons who spend all this time, effort and money (not to mention dumping in the garbage bin the potential lives that didn't happen to have the right gender) if they DON'T grow into the steretyped view of masculinity/feminity that mommy and daddy labor under.

That's my thought too. God help both the kid and the parents if the kid ends up being transgendered.

I question the fitness of any potential parent who only wants a child with a particular trait. People who breed horses for color never have the animal's best interest at heart. The same will turn out to be true here.

While I would also question the wisdom or sanity of someone that would wish abort a child because of its gender, both posters here dance around the MAIN issue here; Should one be prevented from doing so and if YES, what is the punishment?

In another thread someone had the idea that the test to determine gender would be outlawed. At least that is an idea.

If the fetus is just cells to you, why would you care at all why anyone disposed of it?

Why are people upset about killing a fetus because she is female but not upset about killing a fetus because she has Downs syndrome? Do these people know anyone with Downs syndrome? Do they dare stand in judgement over that person's "quality of life"? Very likely, these people aborting their kid because she is female believe that she would not have as good a "quality of life" as a male. These fetuses are innocent human beings -- Stop Killing Them!

is because i am worried about the balance of nature. if that many people were aborting females, could nature adjust? and if so, would it be in a way that we would consider tolerable?

i find it funny that a lot of anti-choicers talk about fetuses like they are stray cats. what's that about? you can't pick up stray fetuses and keep fifty of them in your home until the neighbors call, so why are you so worried about what happens to them anyway?

I could care less why a women would wish to kill a baby that was still in her womb. YES, you are correct on that one!

I'm pro-choice. If she wishes to KILL that baby, so be it!

I say LET THEM KILL THEM!!!! AND, as you know the killing as been going on for year and will continue. Is this a great country or what!

Thank you for your stand. The way i see it is, any maniac who can even think of murdering an innocent child should be locked up the crazy house. They call it "just a fetus," but pray-tell, what does a fetus grow into, A HUMAN BEING!! A fetus is the joining of the mother's egg and the father's sperm; each carrying 23 chromosomes to make for a full, HUMAN, 46 chromosomes. So duh, its already a human, not just a fetus. But if it eases your conscience, for murdering a human being, than go ahead and call it fetus.

So your content with killing a human being? man you better have some crazy sleeping pills to help you sleep at night. Also, you make baby sound like a possession that can be discarded like any other meaningless possession, i got some news for ya pal, it's a human being. Think about this, what if your mother decided you were just some kind of possession that can discarded--is the smoke clearing now tough guy! Next time you use the word kill referring to a human being, use your brain, that's what it is, murder.

The reason people are okay with abortion is because they can't see it. That's the only real reason. Just as we don't care about what's going on in Darfur or North Korea, just as we're not up in arms about the inhumane conditions in slaughterhouses, even though we would be shocked if we saw genocide in our home towns or saw a guy attacking a sick dying cow with an electric cattle prod, we're okay with killing babies that we can't see, but not okay with killing ones that we can. There's no coherent explanation for why killing a newborn baby is murder but killing a fetus isn't. It's just that one's visible and the other's not. Now maybe that's somehow okay. I mean, if I spent x dollars on certain charities instead of shoes, I could save lives; my choice of shoes over charity is in effect killing kids in Africa. We don't think that's necessarily wrong, while we do think that if there's a starving child on your doorstep, you have to somehow save them. Is there some rational reason to treat the two situations differently, perhaps not; maybe what it proves is that ethics are a myth in general, because any one ethical obligation quickly becomes an infinite and impossible obligation to act on if you really carry it to its logical conclusion. Perhaps, as the original poster says, human life isn't precious after all. That isn't my opinion, but it isn't a totally unreasonable one, given how callously we treat human lives as long as they're distant and remote.

Firstly, I am pro-life. Second, I don't think we are ever going to stop abortions from happening, ever since women have been getting pregnant, they have gone to great lengths to terminate unwanted pregnancies. I would much rather it be legal and safe for women to choose this, than illegal and lethal: loosing 2 lives instead of one. That said, I do think we need stronger regulations on abortions. In most places both parents have to sign in order to give up a child for adoption, I don't see why that couldn't be done for abortions too. I agree that abortions are easier for some people because, for some women, while the baby is still so young, the pregnancy and the reality of the baby, just isn't real yet. Aborting a baby because it isn't the gender you'd prefer is ridiculous - what if your precious boy becomes an effeminite man? or your darling girl grows up to be a tomboy and extremely masculine? would you be as happy with your gender selection, or would you regret playing with nature?

"They call it "just a fetus," but pray-tell, what does a fetus grow into, A HUMAN BEING!!"

You just answered your own question with the words 'grow into' ,that is the key, it isn't a human being YET. It grows (and is born) into one. Until then it is a fetus.

In olden times and in poor countries today, there exists "maternal mortality"-- mothers dying in childbirth.

This surely created a gender imbalance. The solution to this gender imbalance was simple. WAR. Send boys off to die and/or capture womens.

War, of course, has "evolved", but even today, you can see examples of humans making war with humans that are little different than animals fighting over mates on the discovery channel.

War is quite good at reducing the excess number of men to woman in a tribe. Of course, on the flip side, sometimes there is an excess number of women. The natural solution is "polygamy", with one alpha male mating with all the females he can keep. This is a common occurence amongst animals.

I'm not sure how an "evolved" society will address a gender imbalance. Rumor has it we are about to find out thanks to china.

China has 1.11 males per female at birth. Other countries like this are armenia(1.16) Bahrain(1.372 adults thanks to migrant workers) Oman(1.419 migrants again), India(1.12 at birth), and more.

Precious few nations have "excess" adult females, but there's two reasons: tourism, and war. Island nations untouched by war and frequented by tourists often have higher female populations, I'm sure this is influenced by the fact women do better in hospitality jobs.

In the end, I think our porous borders will allow us to see quality-based osmosis.

Women will migrate to countries with higher qualities of life and shortages of women. Men will migrate to countries short on men with higher qualities of life. Collapse shall be rare, slow, and self-correcting. Russia, is in such a slow collapse currently, with a negative population growth of 0.484. Eventually this can only reverse-- land is productive, and savvy businessmen will find a way to exploit the land under any legal arrangement eventually.

In particular, I think the US census population pyramid for Russia is wrong: it predicts 128 million for 2025 and 109 million for 2050. This assumes the current trends of population will continue. They probably won't. I imagine the Russians will target and hit 1.5 million births per year, and will up the incentives every time they miss.

" I feel sorry for the kids of these morons who spend all this time, effort and money (not to mention dumping in the garbage bin the potential lives that didn't happen to have the right gender) if they DON'T grow into the steretyped view of masculinity/feminity that mommy and daddy labor under."

If this is a true revelation of your feelings, then aren't you contradicting yourself when

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not weeping because human life is pwecious and even a two-cell fetus counts the same as human being under some supernatural law."

So if the 2 paragraphs are to support each other, then they've failed to establish a firm opinion, since a 'potential life' is such when considering gender, but not when considering a cell count.

Supernatural law aside, if a ball of cells isolated from the external world are to help the balance of nature, how do you suppose this is to happen?

this wasn't directed at me, but i'm responding...

you say:

So your content with killing a human being? man you better have some crazy sleeping pills to help you sleep at night. Also, you make baby sound like a possession that can be discarded like any other meaningless possession, i got some news for ya pal, it's a human being. Think about this, what if your mother decided you were just some kind of possession that can discarded--is the smoke clearing now tough guy!

i agree with jazzquitar and i sleep fine. there is something fundamentally different about discarding a child AFTER it is born than deciding you don't want to have one BEFORE it's born. if you don't understand that (it doesn't have to change your stance), then there's nothing else to discuss.

but what i really want to discuss is the "what if" situation you described. essentially, the question you are asking is: "what if you weren't born?" and guess what my answer is? so be it! big deal!

i begin to wonder if the entire abortion debate is really about people who are so in love with themselves and their own life that they feel that their lives are uber important VS. people who have a much more blase attitude towards life. i'm here and i don't want to die. but i'm not so full of ego that i think the world wouldn't go on turning if i never had existed.

one quick question, if a female decides to abort her {place the blank here} then its not killing, but if someone kills her and {place the blank here} they are charged with TWO counts of murder..either its alive or its not..or is what society is saying that its alright to kill if its the females CHOICE?